Words Unlimited

Book of The Month - April 2013 - Kay Ryan

 

 

 The Best of It: New and Selected Poems by Kay Ryan is my stand-out book this month.  I first came across Ryan when she read at the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival a couple of years ago. United States Poet Laureate from 2008 – 2010, her work is quirky, aphoristic. These short poems with their short lines are deceptively simple.

In a Q&A session at Aldeburgh she talked about what poetry meant to her: 'A poem is a brief moment of clarity.' The effect of reading her work is to clear a space in the head, to sharpen a thought.

Asked about her subject matter Ryan said, ‘The mind itself.’ Ryan is a philosopher of the everyday, catching the epiphany in the ordinary. There are large thoughts in these small poems. She seems to watch the mind at work and catch the thought process in the fewest words; the very opposite of Jorie Graham’s academic digressions, which I also love, but for different reasons.

Ryan also plays with cliché, rehabilitating tired words in poems such as, ‘Bitter Pill,’ ‘No Rest for The Idle’ and ‘Nothing Ventured.’ But I particularly enjoyed the poems that draw on the imagery of the natural world. Ryan calls herself a 'nature exploiter.' She’s not a nature poet in the way of fellow American, Mary Oliver. For Oliver experience in the natural world, its imagery, brings a spiritual quality to a poem.   In a Ryan poem reference to natural phenomena is a way to reflect on down-to-earth human behaviours, as in, ‘Expectations,’  ‘Hailstorm’ and ‘The Edges of Time:’

Expectations

We expect rain

to animate this

creek: these rocks

to harbor gurgles,

these pebbles to

creep downstream

a little, those leaves

to circle in the

eddy, the stains

and gloss of wet.

The bed is ready

but no rain yet.

 

Hailstorm

Like a storm

of hornets, the

little white planets

layer and relayer

as they whip around

in their high orbits,

getting more and

more dense before

they crash against

our crust. A maelstrom

of ferocious little

fists and punches,

so hard to believe

once it's past.

 

The Edges of Time

It is at the edges
that time thins.
Time which had been
dense and viscous
as amber suspending
intentions like bees
unseizes them. A
humming begins,
apparently coming
from stacks of
put-off things or
just in back. A
racket of claims now,
as time flattens. A
glittering fan of things
competing to happen,
brilliant and urgent
as fish when seas
retreat.

Though clearly influenced by Emily Dickinson, this work is distinctively Ryan. I am pleased to have discovered another kind of philosophical American woman; she makes interesting reading alongside Jorie Graham and Mary Oliver.

Again at Aldeburgh, Ryan said that her aim was to: 'Never make you feel heavier. A poem animates you, your cells the space between your cells. It adds oxygen.'

Reading this collection is to breathe fresh literary air, to oxygenate thoughts.

 

Justin David

Writer and photographer, Justin David, a graduate of the MA in Creative & Life Writing at Goldsmiths, has just published his story, ‘Unicorn,’ on Kindle. He talks about what it takes to reach readers, how his story went ‘viral’ and how epublishing might work as a way to attract mainstream editors

   

 PJ: Why publish on Kindle?

JD: After the MA I’d written a novel and been taken on by a literary agent. I was convinced everything would fall into place. The fantasy went something like this: as a writer and photographer I’d be giving interviews on The South Bank Show, signing books everywhere, winning the Booker and Stephen Daldry would direct a film adaptation. ‘Ideas above his station,’ my mother always said. The photography is doing okay but even with a literary agent, getting my novel published is taking more time than I’d imagined, although there has been interest following the London Book Fair this month. But it’s a fact that there are fewer platforms for edgy, queer voices. And among the limited number of independent publishers there’s tough competition. So, while I’m waiting for my novel to find its place in the world I decided to experiment with Kindle Select (owned by Amazon).

PJ: What does this offer that mainstream publishing of a physical book can’t

JD:  It’s a platform that offers authors the opportunity to self-publish, digitally, works of any length or subject.  I found it exciting because you are no longer bound by the traditional forms of short story, novella and novel. Since you’re selling megabytes instead of pages, no one is going to castigate you if your short fiction is over 6000 words, or if your 35,000 words are not quite long enough to call a novel.

PJ: Why short stories?

JD: I had a set of short stories ready to go. Kindle recommends (from a marketing point of view) you publish works over 5000 words, since people seem to expect at least that for their 77p (the lowest possible price on Kindle) even though there are those of us who think a good read is more important than the number of words. Some of my short stories are under the 5000 word mark, so I decided to treat them like old fashioned 8” singles and batch them with a ‘b-side.’ I’ve decided to put them on sale one-by-one instead of instantly giving them all away as a collection.

PJ: How long does it take, and do you need to be techy

JD: It actually takes just minutes to get a manuscript uploaded if you have everything ready. There’s a little bit of reformatting to do along the way, but the Kindle website guides you through the process. It’s not difficult.

PJ: Okay, so you’re published but how do you find readers?

JD: The main issue with this kind of publishing is finding readers. I didn’t have a ready-made audience and no money for a big marketing campaign. However, I do have an audience for the photography. So I cannily set about thinking of ways I could bring my fan-base from the photography to my writing. I have an ongoing project involving photographs of cabaret figures, many of these have been published in magazines. It seemed like a good idea to set up photo shoots with some of these characters to create front covers. Later, I used social networking sites (Facebook, Flickr, Twitter and such) to connect all the dots and reach as many people as possible. By tagging all the people involved in making the images (model and make-up artist) I could reach out to even more people. Miraculously, the story went ‘viral’ as they say, and it wasn’t long before it was being downloaded in Japan, Canada, USA and all over Europe.

PJ: Instant results, but how do you keep that going?

JD: All of this happened at the touch of a button. Publishing at break-neck speed. As growing an audience was more important than making money, I decided to give the story away for five days. Soon there was over a thousand downloads and ‘Unicorn’ eventually reached No. 3 in the Download Chart. If you can get your story to chart long enough during this free period it will remain visible after Kindle switch it to being a ‘paid for item’ and that’s when you can make money. This being my first try, I was quite some way from doing this, but my audience is growing and people left some fantastic reviews on the Amazon page. Next, I signed up to Goodreads, which is a bit like Facebook for people who like reading, and yet another way for authors to gain visibility. Basically, I set about exploiting every opportunity to get word about.

Kindle offer a marketing scheme called Kindle Singles, specifically for short pieces, which, if your work is selected, is a little bit like being on the tables at the front of Waterstones – another way of getting noticed. Though, if you choose to go down this road, it ties you into an exclusivity contract with them and you can’t therefore put your story on another platform, such as iBooks.

PJ: I gather agents are encouraging authors to self-publish as ebooks, particularly work that they can’t readily sell. How did publishing ‘Unicorn’ sit with your agent?

JD: My agent sent the link out to people he thought would be interested in my novel. It has proven to be a useful tool for him to garner interest. Editors might be reluctant to read a whole manuscript, but while doing their homework in preparation for the London Book fair a lot of them downloaded and read ‘Unicorn’ before they received the pitch for the novel. It’s got people talking.

PJ: What’s next?

JD: I have my list:

• Upload the remaining stories to complete the set
• Send press release to magazines
• Network like Madonna
• Schmooze with Melvyn Bragg and anyone at Radio Four

I’ll let you know how I get on. Next year is my year. Does anyone have Spielberg’s number?

'Unicorn' is available to download, here.

More on Justin David's writing and photography, here

Poetry On The Beach

 

I’m really looking forward to this coming weekend in Aldeburgh.

On Saturday 27 and Sunday 28 April poet Tamar Yoseloff will be writer-in-residence in the south lookout tower on Aldeburgh Beach. She plans to create a temporary reading room, a wall of words, an installation of found objects.

She’s invited poets to read with her on Saturday evening on the theme of the sea and I’m delighted to be one of those lucky poets.

This event is the latest in the programme of the Aldeburgh Beach South Lookout Project, devised by cultural entrepreneur, Caroline Wiseman

Granta Best of Young British Novelists 2013

Many congratulations to Ross Raisin and Evie Wyld, both ex-Goldsmiths students who have published excellent novels, won prizes and have now made it on to that most prestigious of literary lists – Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists.  Well deserved! 

Both Raisin and Wyld have given interviews on their writing process to Words Unlimited -  read Raisin on the writing of In God’s Own Country, and Wyld on how she came to write After the Fire, a Still Small Voice.

Lost Key