Writing to fourteen lines is a little bit of a challenge, as any sonnet writer knows, but also a helpful one because it encourages you to find a simple idea that you can focus on in relatively tight language. (Of course, you could cheat and have infinitely long lines, but that would hardly be poetry, would it?)

Anyway, check out the magazine: http://www.fourteenmagazine.com/

(And if you’re following our poetry mag, Antiphon, you might like to know that issue #2 will be out in a couple of weeks, though there’s still time for final submissions. Any late submissions will be considered for issue #3, of course. Issue #2 looks to be bigger (and even better, of course) than the first issue).

Noel

The question is: can we do it again with Issue #2? We’re hoping for more poems, and even higher quality. We want to build a magazine that’s top quality for language and image. We know we’ll have more reviews and articles, but it’s the poetry that really matters. We’re especially keen to promote upcoming poets who are trying hard to get themselves established (because, that’s basically where we are, too).

So, please submit. Send us your very best and help us make Antiphon the best online poetry magazine in the UK.

It’s a busy time for me. Yesterday I read at John Clare’s cottage in Helpston (it turns out I won second prize). The poems are here: http://www.clarecottage.org/poetryprize.htm

Tomorrow (Monday) I’m in an Off the Shelf debate on the Future of the Book. (Sheffield’s Quaker Meeting House, St James St, Mon, 10th Oct, 7.30. Freed admission.)

Weds: we’re running the usual (free, open invitation) poetry workshop at Bank St Arts Centre (12.00 to 3.00, Bank St, Sheffield). If you want to take part, bring copies of a poem to workshop, and we’ll have a discussion of Sean O-Brien’s November, too.
(Also that evening Rachel Genn launches her novel The Cure at Blackwells – should be a pleasant event).

Thursday I’ll be reading on the Speakers Steps at the House of Commons, again for the John Clare competition  - a strange prize, but an exciting one. Around 11.30, I believe, if you’re in the vicinity.

Monday 17th: I’ve a ten minute reading as part of the launch of new mag Uroborus, at Sheffield’s West Street Live (7.30). Another free event.

Weds 19th: Launch of Matter magazine no #11. I was part of the editorial team, but won’t be reading, merely listening to all the fine contributors (including Fay Musselwhite, Angelina Ayers, Rosemary Badcoe – lots of great writers)

Also sometime “real soon now” as they say in the software industry, I hope to have the website of Sheffield’s Public Poetry available for OTS to launch. This is proving harder than I thought to get together, but I think I’ll make it.

If you want to choose other OTS events, you can find a programme at: http://www.offtheshelf.org.uk/programme.php

And whilst all this is going on, Rosemary and I are putting the first fabulous issue of Antiphon together. I think it’s going to be particularly good and will, naturally enough, post a notice when it’s there for your delight and delectation. (Apologies to all poets who’ve not yet had a decision from us: we both need to agree to a poem before including it, and that’s caused a fair series of debates).

Except, isn’t that exactly what the  creative and the academic are supposed to be about – putting ideas out in the world, letting them bounce off each other, seeing which find attractions, want to share their fundamental particles, create new entities.

This was an event at Sheffield University, with a community focus, a city-wide invite for creative people, academics and community organisations to interact and perhaps form new partnerships. I was a little sceptical, but thought that either with my academic mortarboard on, or my writerly fedora there might be someone to meet. With Rosemary, my co-editor (more truthfully, I am her co-editor) we decided to promote Antiphon (which, since you ask has so far attracted a pretty good trawl of contributions, but still nowhere near as many as we would like) and see what happened.

It was great fun. We were able to give away all our flyers and half our bookmarks. A few people played with the poetry dice. Many stopped to talk about poetry – although a disappointing number said “I used to write poetry”, somewhat apologetically – my feeling is they should really apologise to themselves, and find the time, make the space, pick up the pen. I watched a very clever magician, had lovely little chats with a fair number of old friends (not the object, I know, but pleasant to have the chance), got a little business done, saw some very interesting local projects and groups, met a designer who is looking to commission public poetry in Sheffield – which I would fall over backwards to be involved in for, as a native of the steel-soft city, it’s one of my lifetime ambitions to do create that permanent graffitti – Mum would be so proud –  met a wonderfully enthusiastic professor of all things Tudor, sonnet-like and manuscripty (someone said she was a “Tudor professor”, which would have been even more fun), encoutered a purveyeor of vegetable-based entertainment (which I can truthfully say was an absolute first), found myself the intermediary (that’s a big word for someone who does the work and gets nothing for it) between several people of my acquaintance who seemed to strike up interesting friendships, perhaps persuaded a few people to write, though I doubt it, and was amused by the “speed-dating” of exciteable artists and entrepreneurs, which they all seemed to enjoy like six year olds playing musical chairs.

Whether Antiphon will get more submissions or a bigger readership on the back of it, who knows?  I’d approached it with the cynical expectation of damp squibness, and actually experienced a real sense that Sheffield has creative projects on every streetcorner (not just Starbucks). We need more such events – but with a wider net cast. More poets please.

Here you can submit work, read the magazine when we’ve compiled the first issue in a few weeks, and join a poetry discussion forum.

We’re looking for good quality work. We see the job of Antiphon as creating opportunities for poems that are not quite managing to find publication elsewhere, but nevertheless ought to be. The idea of Antiphon is that it should include contrastive voices, different kinds of work, so that it contains a hint of the richness of contemporary work, not just a single kind of poetry.

We also want to support small presses and pamphlet publishers, so we’ll be including reviews of such, and the forum contains a thread for such publishers to advocate and discuss their publication philosophies.

Meanwhile, Clare Cottage have also told me I’m a prizewinner in their competition. I’ve never been to John Clare’s cottage, so the opportunity to read there (part of the prize) will be wonderful. It makes me think I should aim to read in all the “poets’ cottages” in the country (having also read at the Wordsworth Trust at Dove Cottage earlier this year) although that’s probably a silly idea. The Clare Cottage prize also includes reading on the Speaker’s Steps at Westminster, which will be exciting, too.

Hope to see you there

If you’re interested, for details check the blog at: http://bankstreetpoets.blogspot.com/