When is poetry good poetry?

This question came to me a couple of times when I was sorting through a stack of entries to a North Devon anthology. As usual, the standard is very variable, with a lot of very accomplished pieces of fiction and memoir. Writing groups in North Devon have a high standard and are happy to critique constructively, most aren't of the 'well, that's lovely dear' variety. (There's a place for them too, I know). Consequently there is a marked difference between the poetry and the prose entries.

Which is what I'm thinking about. Writing fiction and poetry is so cathartic for many people, so satisfying - does it have to be 'good' as well? If the writer likes it and their family and friends like it, is that enough? What standard do we judge to?

Of course, there's another element here, people want to be read, they often want publication. And mainstream publishers are extremely fussy, they can afford to be. For them to hand over hard cash it has to be a) well written b) saleable and c) turn up at the right time. But in pursuing publication, are we overlooking the value of all of that less 'good' writing out there?

I enjoyed working through the anthology fiction pieces and discussing them with my other judges. Generally, we agreed on what should be included and when we didn't, we included as much as we could. But the poetry creates a dilemma. For me it's simple, put the best of the poetry in, but home-grown poetry isn't like literary poetry. Where a short story in a  magazine and short story submitted to the anthology aren't that far apart, the poems are much further from the literary ideal. Perhaps this is because there are lots of outlets for fiction in popular magazines, and few for poems, but I think at its heart the problem is one of reading. Amateur poets don't read the same poetry as published poets, so their idea of a poem is different. Here's some advice on telling the difference. How to tell a 'good' poem from a 'bad' poem. 

The problem for me is I see lots of poems that by those criteria are pretty good. They lack focus very often, the biggest problem with most of them is they need a lot of editing and development to get to their best. But they have the right stuff in them, they do the job. They evoke a feeling or an event in an interesting way, they connect people. but they aren't good poems by literary standards.  

So what do we do with the not-literary poetry, the poems that don't look or sound like the ones in the poetry magazines and collections? Some of them are just too sentimental, some lack structure or timing or include clichés, but they are still full of emotion and imagery and heart.  Perhaps we should call them something else, spoken songs or poetry of the people, because I think they are an important part of the total scope of creative writing in this country and we need to cherish them. In the meantime, I shall encourage local poets to keep reading, not just the popular poetry but some of the literary stuff as well. Here's a sample of poems to read that will start you off - and entertain you. They run in the poetic veins of our culture, but are they all 'good' poems?

Moving in to a new house

It's taken me eight months to move house, even though we actually moved at the end of August last year. I've been trapped by stuff in boxes, stuff waiting to go into storage, stuff to go in furniture and on shelves. And I couldn't face doing any of it. I just couldn't imagine living here. It feels weird to be here, surrounded by the familiar books and belongings, my special people, yet feeling like we were temporarily waiting for our new house to be available. If I had been plonked down on the pavement surrounded by boxes I wouldn't have felt less at home. It was someone else's house.

This weekend something shifted. Something in me, I suppose, even though it felt like it was driven entirely by Russell. My 'study', the dumping ground from the move, started to shift. 

'I could move your desk if you like.'

That was all it took, really. I had three bookcases in the corner, and I asked him if he could change them around so I could slot my (huge) desk in them somehow. Within two minutes of looking at the bookcases, sucking a pencil and a bit of measuring, he announced that he could, so I called his bluff. 

'Go on, then.'

Anyway, he did. This necessitated me packing up all the books I had moved (but will never read again), reference books that are redundant thanks to the internet, kids' books that can just go into storage waiting for grandchildren and anything I really don't need (800 A4 envelopes that don't stick any more, anyone? Eight almost empty boxes of matches with none of that striky stuff on the sides? Half-eaten feathers that the cats have chewed?).  

Now I have room to write, enough storage and room to teach from home, getting around the problems of finding a space cheap enough to rent. That will keep the cost down to writers. One problem was the large chest of drawers we had in the room, which had everything from maps to candles to batteries, wrapping paper, string, scissors... you can understand why I wasn't sure we could get rid of it. But it's been emptied, relocated to the youngest daughter's room, her room given a makeover, a new bed and it's tidied up. Now all I have to do is tidy my desk, always difficult. The truth is, I write better when my desk is clear (I know, I know, but...) so it's a good thing to do. It's still the hardest bit, even though we must have moved seven or eight hundred books and a lot of furniture this weekend. But I've done my words for the day so I have to tackle it. I'll post a picture to prove I did it!

I did it! Notice I don't show the floor...

Getting more organised... Russ put my pictures up too. 

Writing three books at once...

I know writers who fall deep into a book and write and write and write... I can't do that. Sooner or later I get stuck, I run out of plot and wonder where it's all going. (This would be easier if I was a plotter, I know, but I just can't organise a book until I've written it.) But I'm in the happy position of having a book to finish (A Baby's Bones 2), a new book to write and a book to edit (Secrets 3). It's refreshing going back to a project that I haven't read for many months, while I still get to play creator with the new chapters. I don't know why I write two books at a time more easily than one, but in the last eighteen months (the cancer years) I have written at a snail's pace. Getting back to normal is lovely.

Meanwhile, I have had the pleasure and privilege of reading books by a local writer. You know one of those people that writes fluent, rich books but can't get a book deal? I could see what he was doing wrong - and it's a familiar story, I made many of the same mistakes when I started out. Too many characters, no clear main character, too complex a structure with too many point of view characters, soft chapter beginnings that don't drag the reader in. If I have learned one thing on this journey it is to consider the reader. What are they going to get out of the book? What do they need to enjoy the story?  I know the answer for my genre is characters they find interesting. So often fantasy writers focus on the fantasy, but that's just setting. Ultimately, we want to invest in the people on that journey. I hope to see my friend progress towards publication - he certainly has the persistence and imagination to do it. 

I've also been succeeding with a problem I've had for fifteen years - type 2 diabetes. My blood sugar had shot up and I finally had symptoms. I was looking at more medication and insulin. I've finally given up on the NHS advice of lots of complex carbohydrates and looked into a new approach. It's finding approval in the US and Sweden already and research is pushing it into the NHS as well. My blood sugars are in the normal range, not OK-for-diabetics and I will have to reduce my medicine. Better still, my mood has stopped rocketing around with my blood sugar. As a welcome extra, I've lost a lot of weight, but that's not the best thing about it. Diets are incredibly hard to stick to because you get hungry, and crave your favourite foods. This diet cuts off the sugar rises and falls which dictate appetite. I can feel empty but not yet hungry - in fact I have to be careful I don't just fast all day. Anyway, this is a man who recommends you break up 70% chocolate into squares and put them in a jar, to help yourself if you get the munchies, so he understands. If you're worried about developing or have type 2 diabetes, you might like to look at this website or this book:

Back on the merry-go-round

I still have a book to polish up for publication by Del Rey UK, and I'm very grateful for that. But those books are written and I need to look forward to a new deal somewhere. I feel as if I'm back where I started but with a bit more to put in my writing CV. 

So a book I wrote several years ago will (hopefully) be landing in editors' inboxes at some point, courtesy of my new agent Jane. It only takes one of them to like it, I suppose, but the closer I get to a draft the less confident I become. I'm so familiar with the characters now they seem commonplace and ordinary. So I've spent some time looking through A Baby's Bones again and falling in love with my two principal characters again. 

It's also helped me with the sequel, because I am crawling through the contemporary strand incredibly slowly, barely making 3000 to 4000 words a week. (Note to self - check which box I packed my writing mojo in). It's growing, but I think I'm too distracted with other stuff (losing my mother-in-law, illness, settling into the house) to come up with story. As soon as a moment of plot suggests itself I'm off for a chapter or two - then stagnation again. It will all come together, it always does. Meanwhile I'm still playing with my ghost story. 

Meanwhile, one of my sons is studying archaeology at the University of Southampton, and I am JEALOUS. The more I read, the more fascinating the subject becomes. I'm looking forward to him coming home for Easter to see what his course has shown him - something will spark for the book, I'm sure. He was a fan of ABB and that's a good reason to get on with ABB 2. Love you, Isaac!

The merest suggestion of Spring

I have just realised I write books and set them in the present season. Books get written in spring or autumn because that tends to be when I start a new book. But just to make life difficult, I have set the contemporary strand of A Baby's Bones 2 in the autumn, but unconsciously I am filling the story with daffodils and late snow showers which I can see from the window. Not as obviously as that, of course, but somehow it's creeping in. Reading it back it stands out, and worse than that, I set the historical strand in the spring too, so it would be confusing to switch backwards and forwards. But I did the same for ABB 1, setting the contemporary story in March and April, and the historical strand from August to Christmas. I seemed to get away with that, and I enjoyed writing it, swapping from one to the other. This time it just doesn't seem to work, I'm getting confused. I'm getting my March and October mixed up.

In other news, I'm about to start rewriting and tidying up book 3. I think it's the best of the three Secrets books, I'm learning as I go. But in many ways it's the biggest of the three with the biggest breadth. I suspect it will need a lot more work, and I still don't have a title for it! ARGH! I'm rubbish at titles.

Having been a bit under the weather for the last few months it's nice to be feeling better, almost as the spring unfolds. Maybe that's why it's sneaking into ABB 2. There's a bit of me in all my characters so I suppose it's natural to identify with the characters, but I really do feel closest to Sage, my archaeologist character. Writing her conflict between being a wife and mother and being a professional archaeologist reflects some conflicts in me. I've been the mother of at least one child since 1984, that's officially forever, and today our youngest turned 16. I no longer have a 'child', even if she's still dependant on us she's already looking out at the world. Five years ago I would have said that was a painful thing, but after a lot of grieving as they all moved on or out, I've started to speculate what life on the other side is like. Will I have to take up golf and/or flower arranging? Because all I want to do is catch up on some of the things I missed having my children young. I think it's time to misbehave and shock the 'children'. Maybe Sage can let her hair down too.

Finding the right locations

Last week was all about finding the right location. If I've been somewhere, I write with more conviction and somehow that makes the book seem better. So we drove down to Dartmoor to find a village, a church and a house that could work together for A Baby's Bones 2. We didn't expect the coincidences to lead us all over East Dartmoor like a treasure hunt.

Let me explain. I had to come up with a name on the fly so chose Gould (first 'G' name in the phone book). I had to invent an arrangement of big standing stones on Dartmoor (so I called them Gabriell's Gate - no reason) and I had the fragments of a ghost story about a tiny place on Dartmoor called Lustleigh.

We went to Lustleigh first (because it's on the way to Moretonhampstead which has a tea shop which serves gluten-free cakes, to be honest). The village, which is very picturesque, has an old church - exactly what I was looking for. Thirteen hundreds. added to and extended, tiny. 

Inside, there was a war memorial panel. On it was the name Gould, prominently displayed. The church had some lovely details, including some early memorial carvings moved and set into the walls, and sixteen hundreds memorial stones set into the floor. 

I then went off to look for churches near the fictitious 'Gabriell's Gate'. We had narrowed it down to the Postbridge area - where the local church is called: 

Walking back to the car I was a bit frustrated that no Tudor buildings were nearby, although a glimpse of a house through the trees did catch my eye: Hartyland.

Underneath the 1930's exterior is a thirteenth century farm house, and as luck would have it, it was recently put up for sale, some of the interior photographs were available on Rightmove. Perfect size, perfect location, stone construction, and once you look at the house up close its tall, granite chimneys give its earlier origins away. It's the house. 

Now I can roam about the house - past and present - to my heart's content. It makes you want to rush home and write, which I sort of did. I even missed my gluten-free cakes.  

Sequels, sequels

It's been months since I wrote a blog post but for good reason (or very bad reasons). I've been distracted by various disasters and stresses, and a bit of a wobbly health moment, and the writing just stalled. I could edit, review, organise, but I couldn't find the concentration to find story enough to sit and write new stuff. That seems over because I have rewritten the historical strand the sequel to A Baby's Bones, snappily named ABB 2.

The first book is about an archaeologist (Sage) investigating why a baby's bones are found in a sixteenth century well. I followed Sage's adventures while also writing what happened back in 1580, when a fourteen year old girl (Viola) was embroiled in the story of an illegitimate birth, overwhelming jealousy and loss. I always wanted to know what happened to Viola next. She was such a great character, so I'm sending her off on a journey that a lot of well-born girls made - to stay with a female relative to learn how to be a married woman. I may not have been writing but I have been reading - the life of a Tudor housewife was as a manager of team of male servants. Wives, even noblewomen, had to be the expert cooks, apothecaries and house managers of essentially largish hotels, where a constant stream of visitors and their servants had to be housed, fed and entertained. If anything happened to that female figure and her senior staff the place would fall into chaos quite quickly. The other thing I found strange was how close the relationship between family and servants was. There was a culture of seeing servants as dependants, there was a great sense of responsibility. With men doing almost all of the inside work bar very personal care, women were surrounded by male servants all with their own areas of responsibility. So different from later centuries where there was a great divide between the ruling classes and the ruled! One commentator described being 'scolded' by her hall steward for leaving sewing out and forgetting to oversee the laundry maids. I need a hall steward, he can keep track of all the papers and books presently filling up the study.  

In the absence of servants, I'm waiting for notes about the Secrets book 3, presently without a title. I've been reading Venetian Navigators: The Voyages of the Zen Brothers to the Far North by Andrea di Robilant, the (possibly true) story of Nicolò and Antonio Zen as they travelled from Venice across the North Atlantic - possibly reaching the New World. In the 1380's, way before Columbus. The Venetians were amazing explorers and it's been great brushing up my maritime knowledge before I travel again with Kelley down the Mediterranean, in an open boat, through corsair infested waters.