Heavy Weather
From our Arts Council mentoring scheme, Kate Keogan blogs on finalising her poetry pamphlet and the editorial practices that can make it so hard for ‘new voices’ to get heard …
Image credit: Dave Hoefler
Oh, the relief! When we met on Zoom last week, Pascale did not say she hated my pamphlet nor that it needed drastic changes. She said it was strong and fresh (which are new adjectives I am trying on for size), also “unfashionably visionary” and “on the intense side” (which, to risk busting the seams of metaphor, are wardrobe staples).
We are meeting again in a few days’ time for an end-of-mentoring debrief and also to record a handful of poems for a podcast that Juliette is making for Dialect. I’m not especially worried about reading the poems (I’ve got a couple of short stories on YouTube which I can actually bear to watch) but two things are giving me trouble. The first is that Pascale has asked that I say a bit about my experience of the mentoring process, and also to introduce each poem. “Don’t worry about it,” she said; “it’s just chat.” Chat! My wordy nemesis! The thing I am consistently, comprehensively, inept at!
The greater problem lies in choosing which poems to read. I want to do my pamphlet justice. I want to show my gratitude to Pascale and Juliette by sharing my best work. I feel compromised in both of these desires. How so? In that most of my pamphlet poems are currently out on the submissions circuit and because of the ‘rules’ (and, I mutter to myself, a patriarchal obsession with virginity) concerning simultaneous submissions and prior publication, any poems recorded for the Dialect podcast automatically become ineligible for magazine publication or competitions. This is the way things are and getting worked up about it will get me nowhere. I only remark it is somewhat ironic when magazines declare an aim to champion ‘new voices’, that common editorial practices in effect suppress those voices by keeping work tied up on first refusal for months at a time.
I may be trailing my coat-tails. This may be an attempt at last minute self-sabotage. My pamphlet is all but complete; it is a disorienting experience. The hot weather is not helping. The air is marmalade and I am toast. I am sleep-deprived and heat-delirious. Simple physical tasks take three times more energy and time than usual to do. Stringing a handful of coherent thoughts together is like watching the rise and fall of a civilisation in real time. I am not a poet this week. I am a stressed mammal whose chief concerns are aquatic. By eight in the morning I’ve already lost count of how many glasses of water I have drunk. By breakfast I am already nostalgic for the swim I have only just had. By lunchtime I consider appropriating the bath and snarling at anyone who approaches me and/or the toilet. These are indeed strange, ridiculous, unsettling times.
Kate Keogan is a mentee on our Arts Council supported scheme, working with poet Pacale Petit. This blog can also be read on Kate’s website here. You can follow Kate on Twitter @kathedron
