Writers' groups: are they worth the money?

Regular Soapbox readers will know that I'm involved with a couple of writers' groups in the York area. Now and then I'm asked to chair meetings at these groups. And just once in a blue moon, somebody comes in who seems to be dead set on causing trouble.

The contentious issue a couple of weeks ago was whether or not a writers' group ought to charge people to attend? The troublesome lady in question left us with the very sniffy comment that she'd "never in her life" been asked to pay to attend a writers' group. I can only assume that the writers' groups she has attended in the past have been informal groups of amateurs meeting to discuss each other's work. Because every single other writers' group I have ever come across has needed an income from somewhere in order to operate.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not knocking the "informal groups of amateurs". I used to attend just such a group, back in the Milton Keynes days. And it was one of the things which made life in Milton Keynes bearable. The welcome and support I got from those four or five people is still something I treasure. The inspiration I got from the (sometimes fiendishly challenging) writing "homework" we were set every month was enough to produce numerous brand-new poems and short stories - some of them prize winners.

Any writer would be lucky to find just such a group. And it's just possible that if you CAN find a group like this, you need never pay to attend a writers' group again.

So why pay?

There are a whole heap of reasons. At the most basic level, it might be that the group can't exist unless it can hire a venue. So those who meet might have to put their hands in their pockets just to meet the costs of room hire. Although this didn't apply to the group which our sniffy lady attended earlier this month, who are lucky enough to get their venue for free, it has applied to several other groups I've known. Bottom line: you don't want to pay, you can't have a public venue. And bear in mind that a lot of public venues aren't exactly what you'd call altruistically minded. York Library now charges a minimum £25 an hour for hiring one of their meeting rooms. No wonder literary groups are deserting the libraries and taking refuge in the pubs instead.

The second thing a writers' group with a bit of finance can do, is get professional speakers in. People who are part of the industry - published authors or poets, agents, publishers - who know how the business of writing works and can offer the benefit of their experience to those who are just starting out. Are we seriously expecting these people to donate their time and energy for free? Writers (and especially poets) are forever banging on about how difficult it is to make a living as a writer. The last thing we should do is begrudge them a little remuneration for the professional services they're able to offer.

A writers' group with money can also run competitions. York Writers, for example, do this two or three times a year. They invite their members to submit poems, short stories and articles, anonymously to a professional external judge. The judge not only chooses a winner but provides a critique for each individual piece submitted, and then comes to a meeting of the group and talks in depth about what they are looking for in a prize-winning piece. Members of the group don't have to pay to enter the competitions; the prize fund and the judge's fee are paid for out of what the group collects from members' subscriptions and money taken on the door at meetings.

There are lots of other reasons why a writers' group might need money. They might want to produce an anthology. Or put an advert in the writing press, seeking new members. They might want to run a public event - a talk from a famous author, or a poetry slam (York Writers actually ran a "short story slam" earlier this year, with a cash prize!). Or they might simply want to show solidarity for an organisation like the National Association of Writers' Groups, which exists to provide resources to connect writers across the UK and support their development as writers.

I don't suppose we will be seeing our sniffy lady again. Which saddens me, in some ways: she had a couple of other criticisms which I think were probably justified, and it would be good to at least let her know that her points were taken on board. But is the fact that the group were asking for money really justification for her rudeness? I don't think so. I think it's more likely that she expected everything to be handed to her on a plate, with no commitment on her part. If that's the case, I hope she is able to find the support that she needs for her writing, somewhere else. But I strongly suspect that if she's serious about writing, she may have to put her hand in her pocket every now and again.

Ayat Al-Gormezi freed

Just a very short post today, following on from my last one: according to Write Out Loud, imprisoned Bahrainian poet and dissident Ayat al-Gormezi has been freed. Read more about her and her experiences here. Your can read a translation of the poem which got her imprisoned in the first place, kindly translated by Fatima al-Matar, here.

Thanks to all who have supported the campaign for her release.

When what you write (and what you stand for) is a matter of life and death

Ayat al-Gormezi is a poet. If, like most of my readers, you live in the UK, the chances are you will never have heard of her. I have to admit I'd never heard of her until a day or two ago.

Ayat is currently in prison in Bahrain. She was tried before a "security court", where her lawyer was not allowed to speak, and there are indications that she has been tortured whilst in prison. Her crime? Reading out a poem at a pro-democracy rally.

Poets in the UK are a well insulated lot, by and large. Our world is comfortable, indulgent, and – let's be honest – pretty self-satisfied. The sort of poetry we write doesn't change the world. Our journals prize the esoteric, the obscure and the intellectual – or else make a virtue out of being "experimental", without it being at all clear what the experimentation is for. We take for granted the freedom that we have to paint our little odes about a daffodil or a glass raindrop on a leaf. It's all too easy to forget that there are poets around the world risking their lives for their words – so that their compatriots can enjoy the freedom that we have.

I want to talk about another extraordinary international poet before I sign off. His name is Javier Sicilia. That's him in the photograph that accompanies this blog entry. On March 28th, Javier's son and six friends were murdered in an outbreak of violence between warring drugs traders. Such violence is nothing unusual in Javier's native Mexico; but this poet refuses to be crushed by his loss, or the enormity of the challenge of setting things right in the face of government inaction. Instead he's leading a caravan of hundreds of poets and peace activists across the country – a focal point for non-violent demonstrations calling for an end to the bloodshed.

Javier is taking a risk. No doubt the vested interests controlling the drugs trade will take a dim view of his campaign. But he has something to believe in. "May the light be the road", says the placard that he carries. May it be the road to freedom for him, for Ayat, and for all who suffer for their words. May it be our road too, so that we can stand in solidarity with our fellow poets across the world – and make it clear that what they are suffering should not have to be tolerated.

Sign the petition to free Ayat al-Gormezi here.

The Water of Life?

I can't be the only poet who's sometimes a bit intimidated by those rare and gifted writers who can rattle off new work every day without seeming to break into a sweat. One of the most prolific (and talented) poets I know recently complained to me that she'd only managed to write four poems in the preceding month. I couldn't help replying that that was about as many as I’d managed to write all year.

The truth is, producing poetry at that kind of rate is not something that's likely to happen throughout a poet's life. Pressures of work, the demands of family life, and the cares of the world can all conspire to squeeze out the emotional space that's crucial to the creative process. We needn't feel we are failures when that happens.

The bottom of a whisky bottle isn't perhaps the safest or most reliable place to look for comfort at such times! But there's a certain similarity between what it takes to make a good poem, and what it takes to make a good single malt. Poetry, after all, is also a distillation – an attempt to refine the raw material of human emotion into its most concentrated essence. This process is not something you can hurry. The result may occupy minimal space on the page (or in the bottle) but it's loaded with flavour and impact.

The analogy doesn't end there. As every whisky connoisseur knows, it's usually what happens after the distillation that makes the unique flavour of each single malt. It can't even be called whisky unless it's given a minimum 3 years in the barrel to absorb the flavours of oak and atmosphere. In practice, it usually takes much longer to mature the perfect single malt.

That's the way it is with poetry too. After the initial creative act, it can take a long time for a poem to reach perfection. What follows is a slow process of maturation – of gradual refinement. Replacing one word with a more expressive one; fine tuning the metre; inserting assonances and internal rhymes; adding the brilliant metaphor that usually turns up when we least expect it. This is not a process that should be hurried. Some of my poems are still maturing, years after they were first created. They're not quite right, yet. I won't release them on the unsuspecting public until they are.

There's everything to be said for the daily discipline of writing (even when it feels like the last thing you're ready to do). Poetically fertile periods do come, with poems appearing in a rush. Make the most of these periods, because they won't last forever. And if you're far from those ultra-creative highs, do not despair. Give those poems-in-progress the time and space they need to reach maturity. Let them absorb the rich flavours of your life experience. And trust your poet's palate. You'll know when they are ready.

(This article first appeared in the April 2011 issue of NAWG LINK magazine)

Review: The Illuminated Dreamer by Oz Hardwick (Oversteps Books, 2010; ISBN 978-1-906856-14-4)

Oz Hardwick's third collection of original poetry is a more extrovert work than its two predecessors. The Kind Ghosts and Carrying Fire (Bluechrome, 2004 and 2006) were books that looked back into the past, rich in imagery from folklore and medieval literature; The Illuminated Dreamer documents the poet's journeys across more familiar, or at least more easily pictured, territory. The poems in this collection are beautifully crafted and there is a sophistication to them which belies the accessibility of the subject matter.

After a slightly trance-like beginning, the opening poems of the collection are mainly an exploration of the poet's uneasy fascination with the United States of America. Halsted Street Market in particular captures the complexities and contradictions that present themselves to a visitor's eyes:

"Her clumsy ring, its stone too big, clings
to dreams of dust and slide guitars, handsome
strangers, dangerous to cross...
Beneath the counter, a loaded forty-five,
hair-triggered and warm. She smiles again..."

Many of the poems in this section of the book derive their inspiration from music and film. Bob Dylan features in a number of guises, principally as the symbol of a youth left behind and of dreams not quite fulfilled:

"So when I heard his slow train coming
I watched from the side of the track, nodded,
ordered one more cup of coffee as he passed
and once again left me behind."
(from When Dylan Found God)

There's a nostalgic colour to these pieces, but they are never self-indulgent. A wry awareness that nothing stays the same is the dominant mood. It's present in both the social commentary of Desolation Row Revisited ("now poetry's handled by offshore concerns, / its rhythms stuttered from call centres / in countries with unpronounceable names") and the romanticism of Monochrome ("for you I'll extinguish / Times Square's gaudy neon glare, / mute it to monochrome with a rising Gershwin score, / meet you in secret when the last train has left.") My favourite of this set was The Cats of Greenwich Village, who may have "put on weight since Fred Neil / crossed MacDougal" but "carry it well, proud and hip". Today they "run wholefood stores and guitar shops, / reminisce about sitting on Dylan's shoulder, / relax and let the rats run free."

There's a sense of travelogue in the rest of the collection, but the destinations are predominantly European. As with the American poems, many of these pieces portray a reality that doesn't match up to the clichés of artwork and film; the scenery "seems painted, clouds / unconvincing, grass too green" (Notre Dame de Maigrauge). In Drowning in Paris, the familiar romantic backdrop (the tower "out of focus, its searchlight beams / refracted, showing nothing") evokes a very different story:

"I bent down to look at a postcard stand
and could not surface. Your cold hand slipped
away. I float with flotsam and suicides, abandoned."

In other places, however, the ordinariness of the setting is what allows unexpected magic to happen: the creature "waiting / with flowers at the station door, remembering / all I wished to forget" in Cow Parade: Milan; the enchanted solitude of the Italian riverside "where the bright lights shine, / rain-born and flowing to a foreign sea" in Welcome Stranger; the "Orpheus of the accordion, drunk and swaying" in Orphée.

The remaining pieces are journeys in dreams, strongly reminiscent of those in Carrying Fire. In these pieces, Hardwick’s credentials as a romantic poet are unashamedly laid bare:

"And here I will talk in warm, hushed voices
with those who you have forgotten but who remember you still,
and those whose rooms you keep fresh and ready,
though they will probably never return. All these people
I will know and call my friends."
(from Sleep Now)

The hazy, filmic quality of the imagery in this collection is one of the most distinctive aspects of Oz Hardwick's voice. Reading these poems is rather like being immersed in the very finest scenes from classic European cinema. One is never quite sure where description ends and dreams begin:

"When I see white horses stamping in the car park,
a boy cradling a goldfish that fell from the sky
and wild creatures sniffing at my door, I ask,
but they say nothing, leaving me lost and wide awake."
(from City)

The sheer musicality of his words is also striking. For a predominantly free verse poet, Hardwick's gift for rhyme is first-rate; he manages to sneak rhymes unselfconsciously into pieces that still feel like free verse:

"We have all day to dance. First, feel
this chill air. A bird flutters. A cat
stalks long shadows. A wooden wheel
cracks against cobbles – a tumbrel of clowns, fat
unsmiling masks yawning..."
(from Masks)

And most importantly, he never overdoes it. The same is true of the alliterations and consonances which give many of these poems almost the feel of songs:

"Rain slicks cobbles, shining
like tongues licking lamplight. Listen –"
(from Borderland)

"The mist-kissed cobbles glisten like a tear"
(from Autumn)

"Lips lapping kisses from cloudless sky"
(from Innamorati)

It is this music which gives even the most complex poems an instant accessibility.

The few pieces in more formal metre were, in my opinion, less successful. Here, the weaknesses lay not so much in the choice of words as in an occasional stutter of rhythm or the need to resort to poetic inversion. But these are minor blemishes in an otherwise delightful collection of poetry.

The Illuminated Dreamer is a feast of lush images and intoxicating music. Hardwick's social commentary is intelligent and unforced, and the sheer richness of his language adds special languor to the dream sequences and the love poems in particular. It continues to be a crying shame that Oz Hardwick's work isn’t given the same critical acclaim that many of his less interesting contemporaries receive. That recognition is now long overdue.

For more on Oz Hardwick, visit http://writeoutloud.net/p/poets/ozhardwick.

For more information about Oversteps Books, or to order The Illuminated Dreamer, visit http://www.overstepsbooks.com.

Hey Jack Kerouac

I have a glaring gap in my knowledge of modern poetry. To some, it will seem like a sacrilegious one. I've never read the Beat Poets. And, I have to be honest, I've never quite understood why I should read the Beat Poets.

I'm 40 years old. I know a huge stack of poets in the "around 50" age bracket. And most of those people hero-worship the Beat writers. I've lost count of the number of people of that age who've told me it was Kerouac, Ginsberg et al. who first got them turned on to literature. I think that's fantastic. Anything that gets anyone reading and writing has to be commended. But I think I must have been just slightly too young to catch onto why the Beat writers were significant. I grew up on the Mersey Sound; most of my favourite modern poets were either inspired and mentored by McGough and Henri, or reacted against them.

This is the thing. For me, what the Mersey Sound poets did was real. I could look out my bedroom window as I was growing up, see the shipyards and the river, the two cathedrals, the Liver birds, the Tower Restaurant - the Liverpool icons that I shared with Roger and his contemporaries. They wrote about stuff that I could relate to: the first day at school, the fear of the end of the world (1981 was a paranoid year), and all that slightly bonkers romanticism as I got old enough to understand what romanticism was. What people have told me about the Beat poets doesn't even touch that world. Was there any relevance in Jack road-trippin' and substance-abusin' his way across the highways of America? It was a million miles away from my experience, my hopes and dreams, and what I saw out of my window every day.

OK, poetry doesn't have to be directly relevant to daily life to be meaningful. Some of the best poetry transcends it altogether. I've already written on here about how much The Waste Land inspired me, and I don't think it has a shred of connection with the day-to-day life I live! Poetry works if it inspires dreams. It's just that, for me, there have always been poets other than the Beat poets who have seemed more real, more accessible, better able to inspire those dreams for me.

So this is a plea, to those of you who love the Beat poets. Please tell me exactly what I'm missing. Let me know how and why they inspired you - something that's going to make me want to immerse myself in their world too. I want to understand what it is you feel when you read those works. I want to understand what makes them classics. But before I can do that, I need a way in. And don't feel you can't contribute if you weren't old enough to read the Beat poets when they were contemporary. If you've newly discovered them, that might be even more exciting.

York Poetry was slammin' on 18th!

They said it couldn't happen, but it did... After the demise of the York Literature Festival, you could be forgiven for thinking that no one in York WANTED to show up to literary events. York's first ever Poetry Slam, on 18th March, proved the detractors wrong by packing out The Basement at City Screen Picturehouse and attracting 31 contestants from the local area and as far afield as Newcastle, Manchester and Coventry. After a high-energy Grand Final, Harrogate's Tim Ellis was named York Poetry Slam Champion 2011 and took away a prize pot of £44.62 kindly donated by his fellow performers.

It seems appropriate to set down my thoughts on the Slam while they are still fresh in my mind. So here goes!

I have to begin by thanking the people who made it possible - Helen, my co-host at Speakers' Corner; Jem and Nicola at Harrogate's Poems, Prose and Pints for designing a fabulous poster and plugging the event with all their might; Rose and Alan of Stairwell Books for providing much of the motivation for getting the slam going in the first place; and performance poet Ash Dickinson, our guest judge, for invaluable advice and also for providing a guest slot which was one of the best poetry performances I've seen in ages. Without you guys, there really would have been no slam - we owe it all to your dedication, enthusiasm and energy.

I have to thank the performers too - all 31 of them. Several (including one of our finalists) had never read their poetry in front of an audience before, and deserve massive respect for having the courage to stand up and make themselves vulnerable that way. A great many travelled for miles just to take part. The feedback I've had from the performers was universally positive. All of them seemed to think it was well worth the effort, even if they didn't make it to the final.

The mix of material was gloriously diverse. Our three prize winners truly earned their accolade, but there were some stand-out performances along the way which have left an enduring memory. Some of them were pretty off-the-wall, like the guy who performed his poem lying down on the stage with a sleep mask over his eyes. Some were moments of unintended comedy, like the lady's handbag which inadvertently became the most entertaining stage prop of the evening. Others were quieter, simpler. A poetry slam can be a noisy affair. Everyone expects to have a good jeer at bankers, warmongers and upper-class members of the Cabinet. But sometimes a quietly alliterative poem of lost love, or the image of a young woman in a hijab describing her face, can have a more lingering effect.

Mistakes were made along the way, of course. I thought our publicity was crystal-clear, but there were still inquiries coming in right up to the last minute about who needed to buy tickets, where to buy them from, and what time we were due to start. We had an unforeseen partial clash with another poetry event elsewhere in town - though if anything, we may actually have ended up boosting attendance at each other's events, by providing enough incentive to drag poets from far and wide into York on a Friday night. Not being aware of "how other people do it" led to a couple of complaints, from people who had been to other slams and expected, not unreasonably, that ours would run the same way. But these were very minor niggles, and soon forgotten in the general enthusiasm of the night.

For me, perhaps the best endorsement of the night came from the anecdotal evidence of people scribbling down words and ideas throughout the evening, of conversations overheard in the toilets that people were inspired to get writing. This is what it's all about. If we've given people ideas, encouragement, inspiration - if we've sown seeds that will germinate into new pieces of writing - if we've prompted people to get writing, perhaps for the first time - then I don't think we could want anything more.

It's great to bask in the applause (as Tim will, I'm sure, testify!). It's great to have the reassurance that we sold enough tickets to cover our costs, plough a bit of money into our respective organisations, AND have enough left over to donate £50 to Comic Relief. But we don't do it just for the applause, the self promotion, or the money. We do it to spread the germ of writing - that subversive disease that undermines, inspires, and offers alternatives to a grey, mediocre, recession-ridden world. If we've done our bit to spread that disease, then I'm happy.