This is the third of twenty videos both written and produced by me as part of my ‘Pejorative Terms’ Project. You’ll find the central hub for the poetry by clicking here.
I’ll be providing information on the inspiration and production of this video this week, which will again be linked to the central hub. There is also a portion of this content which will only be available to those who subscribe to me on Ko-Fi.
Click here to go to my Ko-Fi Page.
Thank you for your support.
Well, it’s been A Week, but in the most excellent manner possible. I’m less than two weeks away from my first ever book launch. The reality hasn’t really sunk in, and I expect it won’t until well after the event, but for now, I’m already looking ahead, because it is a foolish woman who lives in the moment of one success for too long. When I look at what has bought me from 2018 to now, a lot of my progress has come by not resting on my laurels and trying as many new things as possible to see what feels like a good fit. That means, right now, I’m on TikTok and making YouTube Shorts.
TikTok is, I have to say, a genuinely intimidating experience, which is why I need to be there right now. It will also be where I advertise the pamphlet launch, just to see if I get anyone buying the book as a result. The same goes for YouTube, whose Shorts programme is being set up not just as a direct rival to TikTok, but as a means of funnelling people from short to long form video. It all makes perfect sense to me from a marketing/promotion perspective. This is how I’m going to start and end my days for the foreseeable future. Time to learn some new skills and see what happens.
I also need to fit this into my new working schedule, which will take a while but should make life a lot easier going forward. Twitter as an advertising medium for me has been transformative in the last twelve months, after all. I’d not have my book deal without it. Bearing that in mind, it is time to keep innovating and assessing where I am.
There is a phenomenal amount to look forward too, after all.
Last night, I did a live appearance in Brighton. MUAHAHAHAHAHA.
I wasn’t a headline, but I was first on. Four poems were read, two of which were less than 10 lines long. I’m enjoying the economy at present of small pieces. All the words have to work extra hard. Also, CRUCIALLY, I’ve seen pictures of me AT THE MIC which will be very useful going forward. I do not possess nearly enough pictures of me doing poetry, it’s on the To-Do list to fix. There’s also so much to think about as a result of last night that I think my head is going to implode. Lots of tea today will help me organize my thoughts.
The biggest takeaway from the gig is that poetry is in good hands right now. I spent time listening to MA students who had been encouraged to come and practice their trade in front of a microphone and, it must be said, utterly owned the space. God, I wish there’d been the ability to poet that early in my life, what might have been different now… but there wasn’t, and life took a different path. This is the space I need to be in now, and it’s great. There were some lovely moments too last night when it became apparent I’ve inspired people with what I’ve produced. THAT’S A GOOD FEELING.
All the poetry on offer was utterly top-notch, and yet again it is a testament to Barbara and Darren that the space not only works, but it is thriving. I really hope to see it grow too in the months that follow, and it is time to organize what I’m doing in February when it happens again. However, before that, there is the matter of TWO OF MY OWN BOOK LAUNCHES…
This is the second of twenty videos both written and produced by me as part of my ‘Pejorative Terms’ Project. You’ll find the central hub for the poetry by clicking here.
I’ll be providing information on the inspiration and production of this video this week, which will again be linked to the central hub. There is also a portion of this content which will only be available to those who subscribe to me on Ko-Fi.
Click here to go to my Ko-Fi Page.
Thank you for your support.
A very intelligent and decent poet and facilitator wrote a blog a while back about progress and success. It shouldn’t matter that everybody else is being published, and you’re not. It really shouldn’t, except it does. Like it or not, the entire fabric of the literary ethos is constructed around what other people consider successful, whatever the fuck that actually means. To move forward, to be seen as capable, talking about when you’ll be published is no longer enough. It has to happen.
Many people pick the route of least resistance and publish themselves, and to be honest, it remains the best way to make money. There’s nobody else to pay but you and the printer… but the scope can be small, and the results can feel variable. When all is said and done, having other people tell you that you’re amazing and yes, could they publish your work because they think you have the potential to make everybody’s lives richer is… yeah, it’s a Thing.
This Summer, I realized how many other people needed to know I could do this. It’s also a Thing for family, your friends, your peers… when they see you working your arse off, submitting and continually failing… the assumption is that you are clearly not there yet. You need more practice, or the right place to settle your work. With time, writers begin to get the sense that even with everything else in place, the best ideas and the strongest output… it’s never just the words that matter. It’s you, too.
I have been massively lucky in the last eighteen months, but have also worked extraordinarily hard to put myself in spaces that previously were not available. COVID granted an unexpected boost : suddenly, travel to literally anywhere was possible using a computer. Instead of just doing the work, a great many extra virtual miles were walked and a tonne of extra online effort was inserted into everything that was presented. In the end, it was patience that was the missing piece of my puzzle.
It was all about waiting for the right moment. Two mutuals who I hugely respect decided to start their own Small Press in the Summer. They granted me a twenty-minute headline slot in a virtual event back in April. Then, when they saw me perform at their return to in person events in Brighton, I was asked if I’d publish with them. They couldn’t believe that I hadn’t been snapped up by anyone else. It transpires I do my best work behind a microphone and not on a page. Who knew?
I was first published in December 2018. Four years later, my inaugural poetry pamphlet will be published on November 30th. Many people have achieved more in less time, and many others have never managed so much this quickly. Success, it must be said, is very much a relative endeavour. I have a phenomenal number of people to thank for helping me here as well. I remember you all by sight, even if I end up forgetting most of your names. You are all absolutely smashing.
Flammable Solid is the next chapter of a journey I really hope never ends. I have never been more proud of myself or what is being produced at present. There has been so many compliments, so many brilliant people who have bolstered an often fractured sense of worth and ability and it is to them I look to now with grateful and bountiful thanks. Your compliments are more important than either progress or success. You have given me a value I never thought I’d ever own.
THANK YOU ALL.
PS: I did a different version of this on Twitter that actually thanks people. It starts here:
It’s that time of year again. Due to literally not having had the time to prep for either this or World Mental Health Day on the 10th (for reasons that will soon be apparent) I’ve had to be a bit sneaky this time around, and I am hitting Social media at the two most busy times for me: 9am and 5pm, with these blogs filling the spaces in between. This is the second poem: ɛvəluːʃ(ə)n
Here it is for those of you who like your poems not in graphic form:
ɛvəluːʃ(ə)n consider this a fitting end to each selfish bastard the code which humanity was never meant to cypher humans once lived here extinct now no longer a blip the errant bug this line coldly remembered as strata
I didn’t realize that strata was a plural form until I wrote this poem (a single layer of rock is called a stratum) and this then caused a bit of frantic, eleventh hour editing. If you can find people willing to look over your work, these are the friends you want to keep forever. As I also mentioned in the previous blog, this piece also echoes another piece of work written this year. We are only tourists on this planet, and it is very obvious that the holiday period is now coming to an end.
The more I write environmental work, the more I am drawn to doing the forms justice. I entered for the Gingo Prize but didn’t make it past the first stage: I’m hoping that in time there might be a longlist appearance. I think I’d take that as significant progress. Writing commercial work is very difficult for me, especially when it is about such important subjects. The more I practice, inevitably, the better I will get at the final result. I’m very proud of both these pieces.
If you enjoy this poem, please consider buying me a cuppa on Ko-fi.
It’s that time of year again. Due to literally not having had the time to prep for either this or World Mental Health Day on the 10th (for reasons that will soon be apparent) I’ve had to be a bit sneaky this time around, and I am hitting Social media at the two most busy times for me: 9am and 5pm, with these blogs filling the spaces in between. This is the first poem: The War on Trees.
Here it is for those of you who like your poems not in graphic form:
The War on Trees This summer was a killer behind beauty, lingers terror; I'm not strong enough to survive another. You see nothing, I'm constant, craving for rain, respect, the hands that once celebrated grain now instead are tempted by a wheel, the coin, nothing at all. Our roots are failing, the landscape, burning my name, becomes my fate.
There’s an actual, interesting story for this poem, too: the first two lines occurred to me as I was driving in heavy, rush hour traffic on a dual carriageway and unable to stop. Panicking slightly, I phoned home, knowing nobody was there, before leaving myself an answering machine message. I invented the distance dictation device, and really have to hope that’s not the first time a writer has panicked and done the exact same thing.
This year’s been a significant one for me in terms of environmental work, having plucked up the courage to submit a science-fiction based concept to a major concept. There are echoes of it in the second poem: this one is the constant reminder to myself that we know so little about trees, and we are treating them, as we are all nature at present, with little or no real care. I think many of my favourite spaces are close to being decimated by the changes in climate. I really hope that I am wrong.
If you enjoy this poem, please consider buying me a cuppa on Ko-fi.
This is the first of twenty videos both written and produced by me as part of my ‘Pejorative Terms’ Project. You’ll find the central hub for the poetry by clicking here.
I’ll be providing additional information on the inspiration and production of this video this week, which will again be linked to the central hub. There is also a portion of this content which will only be available to those who subscribe to me on Ko-Fi.
Click here to go to my Ko-Fi Page.
Thank you for your support.
Claire Askew grew up in Scotland, and holds a PhD in Creative Writing and Contemporary Women’s Poetry from the University of Edinburgh. Her first book, This changes things, was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2016. She is also an award-winning novelist, with books in her DI Birch series published by Hodder and Stoughton.
I left Claire’s book until last in my Sealey adventure for a couple of reasons: having heard her read in the Summer at someone else’s launch, I found myself compelled to go back and pull out her body of work. There’s also something about this book which means I cannot keep away from it. It has a lot to do with it being one of the few poetry books I’ve read which places a trigger warning well before a poem appears.
This book is an amazing thing, that gives on one page and summarily destroys on the next: Claire is a remarkable writer and every poem is a song, the lyrics of a story it is impossible to look away from. From the roll-call in The women who’ve loved you to the abject terror of brazen male violation in Men, these poems know the stories and are not afraid to tell them in their uncompromising, frightening seriousness.
It takes a phenomenal amount of courage to write like this, to be unafraid of the details, to present the truth and events that you often have no choice but to live in an audience and a space. It is also the knowledge that these things have happened for centuries, are happening as I type this, that makes the whole collection as incendiary and powerful as it will always be. These moments don’t fade in time either, they gather fervour.
Only when you have been through these attacks, when you know the men responsible and why they need to control… do you find the strength to write. This book should be required reading for so many people, needs to be held up as a demonstration of what is both good and bad about the world. Of all the books I’ve read this month, this is the one that resonates the most on a personal level, because inside many of these poems, pieces of my own life lives and breathes.
Will you read it again? Yes. I’ve used at least one as a prompt for my own work.
Would you recommend it for me to read? Everybody needs to read this book. EVERYONE.
Buy this from Bloodaxe
Fletcher Mathers for the imagery
Coming second for the inference
A spell to honour your foremothers for the impact
John McCullough has won the Hawthornden Prize, has been shortlisted for the Forward Prize and the Costa Poetry Award. His work has been nominated as Book of the Year in both the Guardian and the Independent, and he teaches Creative Writing at the University of Brighton.
I met John on Twitter (absolutely true story) or rather, I encountered his poem Flower of Sulphur for the first time when it was nominated for the Forward Prize. It’s a poem that will stay with me for the rest of my life: clever, deeply personal, educational, heart-rending, practical and utterly, completely brilliant. I was beyond pleased when he became a mutual, and this collection is… well, it’s 100% John at his brilliant and acute best.
Panic Response is another of those books which I wish I’d written: from the surreality of A Chronicle of English Panic, through the idiosyncrasies of deconstructing Emily Dickinson in Six! to the mini movie/banging Sarf Coast anthem that is Prayer for a Godless City… it’s one of those classic double albums from the 1980’s when not a single track was duff, and you wore out your vinyl playing it on repeat. I am legitimately on the second copy of this book, and that’s as high as my praise goes, to be honest.
When you look at a blurb and people appear to be throwing about disparate moods about a text, it becomes a lot more exciting, or at least it does to me. The whole collection is a series of experiments, of reflections and deconstructions, but at its heart is a poet who utterly gets what is going on in their world and is completely happy explaining in whatever manner they feel. Quantum is the standout poem in that vein.
John is also possibly one of the most accessible and approachable poets in my mutuals: his life is bright, bold and holds just the right amount of soft, cuddly plankton. He’s also not afraid to speak his mind, and that’s something that I wish more poets would do. Not only is he a cracking Twitter follow therefore, he’s also a behemoth collection creator.
Will you read it again? Flower of Sulphur gets read more frequently than perhaps I ought to admit in public…
Would you recommend it for me to read? Yes, and there are some other top quality poetic works available at PitM as well…
Buy this from Penned in the Margins
Crown Shyness for the imagery
Oops, I Did it Again for the inference
Flower of Sulphur for the impact
The Internet of Words 
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