On 5th January, Graham High put on a reading of 3 ‘Oversteps’ poets at a private house in Blackheath: Graham and I and Maggie Butt. It was considerably oversubscribed and many people who wanted to come had to be told that the event was full. Graham has therefore organised another one, on Tuesday 17th January 2012 – again the event is free entry and by invitation only. Please let me know if you would like to be invited. – e-mail Anne.
As Poet in Residence for Newstead Woods Girls’s School, I’m running workshops there in January and following with a reading there in March. In April, I’ll be reading at Poetry in Palmers Green – more to follow on that one. Meantime, I’m co-editing ARTEMISpoetry Issue 8 (May 2012 edition) with Second Light founder and organiser, Dilys Wood.
For most of March, I’ll be in Scotland on an extended holiday of 3 weeks…
(view past events)
Recent/forthcoming publications/Reviews:
Anthologies: Grey Hen Press’s latest anthology of work by women poets, Get Me Out of Here! Poems for Trying Circumstances came out in July; Brittle Star’s 10 year celebration anthology, Said and done, is now out and I’m one of 14 poets represented in it; and WordAid’s new anthology, a fund-raiser for ShelterBox, titled Not only the dark, came out in November. I have 2 new poems in Get Me Out of Here!, 4 new poems in Said and done and 1 poem from The Janus Hour, “The Meeting of Generous-Seeming Men”, in Not only the dark.
Poems in Issue 155 (Spring 2011) of Orbis (Box), which was placed in the Readers’ Award, and Issue 6 (May 2011) of ARTEMISpoetry (Cut, and At the Top featured on the back cover); also in Issue 7 (Feathers). Tube thoughts from the woman two seats down appears in a new journal, Domestic Cherry and poems in Romanian translation have been published in Romanian journals: Bucovina Literara (translator Anca Iancu) and actulitatea literara (translator Simona Gosu).
The latest review of The Janus Hour is by Fiona Sinclair and appears online at Helen Ivory’s Ink Sweat and Tears blog (see June 2011 entries). Previously, it was reviewed by Penelope Shuttle in ARTEMISpoetry Issue 5, by Jeremy Page in The Frogmore Papers No 76, and by Anna Avebury in the Ver Poets Newsletter Winter 2010.
Shortlands Poetry Circle Writers Group launched our Centenary celebration anthology, each passing breeze, privately at the Circle in February 2011, and publicly at the Beckenham Bookshop in March. Each of the writers in the group as at Nov 2009 has several poems in the anthology. £7 (+£1.30 p&p) from me e-mail Anne or from the poetry p f online shop.
I’m the Featured Poet in the 2011 Spring issue of Equinox.
Two of my poems spent November 2010 to May 2011 touring Guernsey on buses;
and I have a poem in each of these fundraising anthologies:
Sixty Poems for Haiti, 2010, ISBN 978-0-9562901-3-7, £9 from Cane Arrow Press
Did I Tell You?, 131 poems for Children in Need, 2010, Categorical Books, ISBN 978-1-9046621-1-2, £12 from WordAid website
Soul Feathers, for Macmillan Cancer Support, 2011, ISBN 978-1-9074013-6-7, £11 (plus p&p) from Indigo Dreams
… and in The Winners Bridport Prize anthology 2010, 978-1-9065936-9-8, from Bridport Prize website
A couple of poems…
The phone rings halfway through my omelette.
Dad must have said it was a quickie because my man
tells him he thinks I can squeeze him in mid-chip.
What’s a balance sheet? he asks me. It seems
an odd question, with nothing to relate it to, but hey,
he’s my dad – anything he wants from me, he’ll get.
I tell him it’s a setting out of a company’s worth
at a stated time, but there’s something vaguely odd
about his silence, so I flesh it out a bit, wondering
how much detail he might want, and I’m mad to ask
(knowing him so well and that he’s capable of anything)
what does he want it for? Is he starting up a business?
A longer silence, and he speaks again. Oh. I say, and now
the question makes more sense. It’s a bottom sheet
I tell him, that hangs over the edge in a frilly border
and then, To the floor, I guess about a foot. Or I would
have said about a foot, but my man’s laughing and
I laugh at how it was for him, just getting the one side.
And I keep seeing my dad’s face, just as the company
balance sheet snaps into focus before the valance sheet
comes floating down. The omelette’s lost to me now.
I laugh and laugh, until I wonder if my heart can take it,
and when I stop, the farce replays, surreal, with all
our puzzled faces and I start again, until I’m blinded;
until I can’t tell whether he’s still on the line or not.
When it subsides, I remember how my mother
could always make me laugh like this. My sisters,
all the women in our family, are the same,
cracking each other up at the slightest thing.
And now she’s here. It’s good to laugh again.
© Anne Stewart
winner of the Southport Poetry Competiton, 2009;
published in collection, The Janus Hour;
included in anthology, Poetry South East 2010, eds Jeremy Page & Catherine Smith,
The Frogmore Press, ISBN 978-0-9531383-5-7. £5.
Weekdays, it’s him. Up and down and brings
the morning in a glass as though it’s his.
This is the only time he chooses fizz
and sparkle, and I pass. My morning wings
are folded still. I shift. I pull some strings
and chance an arm on risk-free promises,
the simple generosity of this;
his gift of water and awakenings.
Weekends, it’s me, cherry-pink and fast,
so much to do, so let him sleep, so what?
My turn: two kinds of everything I touch
(I’m reconciled to differences at last,
becoming glad he’s everything I’m not).
The tray is full and nothing is too much.
© Anne Stewart
Published in the Bridport Prize 2008 anthology, ISBN 978-1-906593-18-6, available from Bridport Prize website
Listen to poem (also on Bridport Prize website); also in collection The Janus Hour
My first collection The Janus Hour is published by Oversteps Books and came out in July 10.
Comments:
“Anne Stewart’s poetry is characterised by a view of the world that is quizzical, appraising, unflinching yet non-judgemental: this is how things look from here, it says; take it or leave it. Her poems address, with the same deft lightness of touch, both uncomfortable truths about our time and the surreal in the everyday, achieving a rare consistency of expression without ever being predictable.”
Jeremy Page, editor, The Frogmore Papers.
“The Janus Hour is strong, resourceful and varied, dominated by its music and a sense of quest for survival, for the light behind the clouds. Mercurial, like a Fellini film.”
Katherine Gallagher
“Anne Stewart is a highly skilled poet whose poetry can be highly disturbing. Her sonnets, terza rima and other poems are beautifully wrought, yet her subject matter is very near the bone. Mothers, sisters, deaths in the family and a ‘list of cruelties’ are prominent in this book, which is essential reading for all interested in women’s poetry.”
Merryn Williams, editor, The Interpreter’s House.
“… For Anne Stewart writes like the lovechild of Dorothy Parker and Louis MacNeice. She possesses a wry and humane wit modulated by illuminating and synaesthestic insights that draw the reader in. If hers is a harsh enchantment, it is nonetheless true enchantment.”
Penelope Shuttle, review in ARTEMISpoetry Issue 5.
copies from the Oversteps Books website or signed copies from me via the poetry p f online shop.
Anne is a poet, reviewer, and provider of services to poets and poetry organisations.
In 2000, she began working towards a life with poetry at the centre of it, joining the Post-graduate Creative Writing programme at Sheffield Hallam University. In 2003, she was awarded an MA with Distinction and in 2005, was selected as one of the "Ten Hallam Poets" represented in the anthology published by Mews Press (eds. Sean O’Brien, Steven Earnshaw and EA Markham). The anthology attracted high praise from top-calibre poets (Don Paterson, Julia Darling, Helen Dunmore).
In 2008, she won the Bridport Prize for her sonnet, Still Water, Orange, Apple, Tea. Judge, David Harsent, said of it "…what marks it out is the way this emotional commonplace is adapted to language … no line lacked a surprise … I liked its briskness – celebratory, but never cloying – and liked too, the fine-tuning: … a tone of voice that promotes brevity … where the notes in question sing and tease and intrigue … "
Her first collection, The Janus Hour (Oversteps Books, 2010), “is characterised by a view of the world that is quizzical, appraising, unflinching yet non-judgemental: this is how things look from here, it says; take it or leave it. Her poems address, with the same deft lightness of touch, both uncomfortable truths about our time and the surreal in the everyday, achieving a rare consistency of expression without ever being predictable.” – Jeremy Page, editor, The Frogmore Papers.
She has a 25 year background in commercial work: Accounting, Project Management, Training & Mentoring, IT & Systems Development. This has given her a wide range of skills and, whatever poets need doing, Anne works on the basis that ‘if she can, she will’ …
She created and maintains the poetry p f and SecondLightLive web-sites and is a part-time (1/2 day a week) administrator for Second Light Network. She tops up her poetic income (!) with commercial work on a consultancy basis, currently including a few hours a week at the publishing house, Enitharmon Press and Enitharmon Editions.
links:
Frogmore Press
poetry p f
SecondLightLive
Enitharmon Press & Enitharmon Editions
She lives in Kent with partner, Richard Stern, an architectural technician.
In 2005, she founded poetry p f, with the idea of creating a focussed and organised space to showcase today’s poets and to provide them with a searchable and contactable internet presence, with the overall aim of promoting poets and poetry to a wider audience.
The poetry p f website receives an average of 175,000 hits per month (at Nov 2011) and is the basis of collaborations with project partners in Romania – poetry pRO and Germany – poetry tREnD.
The online shop went ‘live’ in 2008, principally selling Poem Cards and books with whose publishers there is some association. The Poem Cards are published by poetry p f with the idea that more ‘real’ poetry can be put in front of a wider readership by using a medium that’s generally well-received, being borne out of a spirit of generosity and good wishes.
The Poem Cards feature poems by members, poetry p f commissions artwork and pays royalties, and some shops and galleries now carry these cards in their range. There are over 50 designs for Anytime, Special occasions, Christmas and New Year and the ‘12 poems, 12 poets’ Christmas and New Year set includes poems by Mimi Khalvati and Carole Satyamurti, whose generous support for this project is hugely appreciated.
poetry p f’s publishing imprint is yet to find its true direction, but has published one collection, "Talking of Pots, People & Points of View", by Leicester poet Alice Beer (1912 – 2011), and, in 2009, a bilingual anthology (English/Romanian) of poetry by poetry p f members with translations by MA and PhD students at the University of Bucharest. The anthology, "And the Story Isn’t Over…", and its companion CD, "And the Story So Far…" present, between them, the work of 49 poets (a representative selection of work recently published by both mainstream publishers and in literary journals) and 46 translators. Also see Romanian Connections.
Poem Cards, Alice Beer’s collection, and the And the Story… anthology and CD can all be bought from the poetry p f online shop, and there are links there to read the poems on the cards.
Anne is a part-time administrator for Second Light Network, a network for older women poets, founded by Dilys Wood. She (Anne) serves on the Committee, created and manages the SecondLightLive website and assists with the technical aspects of managing the membership, 300 strong and on the increase. She co-edited, with Dilys Wood, the pre-launch issue and Issues 1 to 4 of the bi-annual publication ARTEMISpoetry, from Second Light Publications.
SecondLightLive
Shortlands Poetry Circle was formed by Miss Catherine Punch in 1911 with the aim of encouraging appreciation and enjoyment of poetry (isn’t that what every poet wants?). The group meets regularly to read and share poems new and modern, themed topically or by focus on particular poets. Anne is President (a three year term) and, again, manages their web-page and email list, and helps with some of the administration work. She is also a member of the Circle’s writers’ group.
link to Shortlands Poetry Circle on poetry p f
Anne is the Kent North West ‘Stanza’ Rep for the Poetry Society. The Stanza group holds 8 meetings a year – discussion, readings, workshops – in The Two Doves, 37 Oakley Road, Bromley Common, generally on the 3rd Tuesday of the month (excluding Dec, Jan & Aug/Sep) but in October, meets on National Poetry Day for a more ‘glitzy’ event.
The poetry p f poetry pRO project continues to extend and expand and, having worked with Romanian translators as ‘polisher’ on, amongst other things, Lucian Vasilescu’s long poem, close. so far away, “it was very exciting to receive a signed copy of the finished, and beautifully designed, book (integral/vinea, 2009) at the start of 2010, which is turning out to be another ‘very good year’ for poetry”.
Prof Lidia Vianu has initiated a newer and better Translation Café and Anne has joined her on the boards of, not only Translation Café, but of her new online publishing imprint, Contemporary Literary Press and the new bilingual Eng/Rom journal, Contemporary & Literary Horizon (Director: Mihai Cantuniari).
Janis is a terrific singer/songwriter and is very happy to perform at poetry events. Do pay a visit to her website and sample the music there…
www.janishaves.com
Vanbar Multimedia: gave me all the training I needed to create the SecondLightLive website (and wrote the clever bits) and is advising on the redevelopment of the poetry p f site. He creates websites from scratch and he asks all the right questions before he starts … What could be better?
www.vanbar.co.uk
Silbercow: specialises in graphics and design and layout and will tackle anything related to it that you need for poetry projects. He’s experienced and expert, very connected with poetry organisations, and comes highly recommended. He’s also co-editor of Brittle Star poetry magazine.
Contact: Silbercow, Hiltongrove Business Centre, 12-15 Hatherley Mews, London E17 4QP
www.silbercow.co.uk email: info@silbercow.co.uk
He sorted me out a date for a reading at very short notice, gave good advice on putting it together, liaised directly with the performer about equipment etc, and helped promote the event… And all this for a lovely venue that doesn’t charge a room hire fee. A great place for a poetry event.
www.charterhousebar.co.uk
Anne Stewart, 20 Clovelly Way, Orpington, Kent, BR6 0WD. UK.
Tel: +44(0) 1689 811394 Mobile: +44(0) 7850 537489
e-mail Anne
on poetry p f photo, biography and poems.
on SecondLightLive poem, profile & Committee Member profile.
at Oversteps Books, publisher of first collection, The Janus Hour in July 2010.
Still Water, Orange, Apple, Tea on the Bridport Prize website, audio file of the winning poem in 2008.
in Brittle Star, Issue 17 Tom Raworth: Three close reading
(Poetry Library digital archive)
in Brittle Star, Issue 19 Star Questions interview
(Poetry Library digital archive)
in The Frogmore Papers Iss 68 poem, As Well As Can Be Expected
(Poetry Library digital archive)
on the Frogmore Papers web-site poem, Winter Loving
on nth position poem Heath, September 2001
at Tongues and Grooves (and select 'Tongues') – poem And the boat upon the water
at Strix Varia article on the writing of poem, Body Language, published in The Interpreter’s House and submitted for the Forward Prize, 2004
at EyeWear reviews of C L Dallat’s The Year of Not Dancing and Dorothy Molloy’s Long-distance Swimmer
at D I C H T H A U E R poem The Truth About My Mother and German translations
at Translation Cafe poems and Romanian translations
audio, Romania Cultural broadcast by National Broadcasting Corporation (after the burst of song!), poems and Romanian translations
2011 got off to a fine start with a reading at Newstead Woods School for Girls in Orpington… Many of the students who attended are already writing poetry and the level of questions they asked was very impressive. Good luck with your writing ladies…
In March, the Shortlands Poetry Circle Writers launched their Centenary Celebration anthology, each passing breeze at the Beckenham Bookshop, I read in York at the Oversteps Books reading, hosted and read at the Grey Hen Press reading at The Luxe in London, and was adjudicator of the Bromley (Kent) Festival of Music and Speech ‘original verse’, which took place at Farringtons School.
I was in Guernsey in May, attending their inaugural Arts Festival – very well organised, great fun, and a real pleasure to have taken part – having had two poems roaming the island on Guernsey buses: Forbidden? and On a Bike Stand.
Straight back from there to read at Poetry in the Crypt, Islington, with Wendy Klein and Jeremy Page. These events are run by Nancy Mattson and Mike Bartholomew-Biggs – they have poets from the floor, cakes and coffee, and all proceeds go to support Hospice Care in Kenya. Info 0207 354 0433.
Also in May, Sebastian Hayes (not Barker! Sorry for earlier misinformation…) put on a poetry pRO reading as part of his ‘The Trace They Wished to Leave’ poetry in translation series. Good to have a public reading of some of the collections we’ polished; Leah Fritz and Graham Mummery on Romanian poets: Sorescu and Comanescu; I read from Lucian Vasilescu’s ‘close. so far away.’
Second Light launched Issue 6 of ARTEMISpoetry at the Poetry Library, Southbank, on 1st June. I presented the poets and the first half (technical problem…) was recorded for the Library’ digital archive.
Fri 17th June, as part of a Second Light festival in Bath, Six Women Poets in Somerset, I gave a talk, Why Sonnet? on the sonnet’s place in today’s writing.
In June, I read with the Shortlands Poetry Circle Writers Group, along with members of The Beckenham Scribblers and Writers Unlimited, at the Beckenham Bubble event at Beckenham Library.
It’s the Shortlands Poetry Circle’s Centenary year – exciting stuff – and the Centenary Celebration lunch at the Bromley Court Hotel, also in June, was a great success! We had a really great reading from Alan Brownjohn, and our honoured guests included the Deputy Mayor of the London Borough of Bromley, and the Chair and Deputy Chair of Bromley Arts Council. There are photos here: Shortlands Poetry Circle on poetry p f.
In July, I took part in a full day presentation of events by Oversteps Poets at the Ways with Words Festival in Dartington, then read at the Poetry Café in Covent Garden with Katherine Gallagher, Jeremy Page & Merryn Williams at the Poetically Speaking event.
August – a wonderful residential week with Second Light at Holland House in Cropthorne, then down to Southsea to Tongues & Grooves for Brittle Star’s southern launch of Said and done… it’s all go!
September saw the Suffolk launch of the new Grey Hen Press anthology, Get Me Out of Here!, at the Walpole Old Chapel and Joy Howard and her gang of feisty females (including me) were there to read… then to Italy for Poetry on the Lake. I was a sifter in the competition this year – a lovely festival and a good time had by all.
Shortlands Poetry Circle put on a ‘Poet Taster’ reading at the Beckenham Bookshop in October (photos here: Shortlands Poetry Circle on poetry p f); I took part in a London reading from Said and done in November, and the Second Light Autumn festival was also in November – it was fairly buzzing after the workshops and we had exceptional readings on the Saturday night from Gillian Allnutt, Mimi Khalvati, Jane Duran, and several others, as well as an exciting variety of poems in the two members’ reading events.
2010: hardly at home through most of November, what with coming home from Torbay just in time to go to the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival, then down to Falmouth to read with Penelope Shuttle and Ann Alexander at the launch of Penelope’s latest collection Sandgrain and Hourglass and that soon followed by a lovely stop-over in Bath for a reading from The Janus Hour. Huge thanks to organisers and generous and genial hosts, Caroline Carver and June Hall… Then back home for the ARTEMISpoetry Issue 5 mail-out. What fun!
28 Oct to 1st Nov: Torbay Poetry Festival, quoted as “one long poetry party” (Martin Blyth) and it’s spot on. Poet interviews, presentations, readings, poetry quiz – our team took a joint 2nd prize with a cheeky bonus point. Jane Holland (Stride, Salt), Carole Baldock (Orbis) and I (poetry p f) presented with a Q&A session on ways of presenting poetry – why we chose the methods we use and, more key perhaps, why we keep on doing it… Readers included Penelope Shuttle and Wendy Cope. A marvellous event, run by Patricia and William Oxley. I highly recommend adding it in to your schedule for next year.
link to Torbay Poetry Festival website
Tue 12th Oct: I was one of several poets who read at the Blackheath Village Library, from the “Sixty Poems for Haiti” anthology, sold to raise funds to assist the recovery efforts.
Sat 9th October: The Virginia Warbey Poetry Competition festival day, run by Chandlers Ford Writers took place in Winchester. As well as having a poem long-listed, I was invited to read a few poems from The Janus Hour. A very friendly event and the prize-winners poems were exceptional.
Fri 8th October. The first of two Second Light Festival days (the other is 18th November) with really good workshops by Fiona Sampson and Penelope Shuttle. I gave a 20 minute reading afterwards and then it was off to a very packed Art Workers Guild for the launch of Inside the Brightness of Red, a posthumous collection of poems by Mary MacRae.
Thu 7th October: The National Poetry Day celebration by Poetry Society Kent North West Stanza went well, with readings from members and visitors. A small but lively group!
1 to 3 October: Italy, the beautiful Lake Orta, Isla St Giulio. Several days of celebration of Poetry on the Lake’s 10th Anniversary. As always, despite this being the first time I’ve seen anything but hot sunny days there, it was a great get-together with lots of poetry readings from prize-winners and guests (of which I was one).
8th August: read along with Josh Ekroy at The Torriano Meeting House, Kentish Town.
July 2010 saw the launch of my first collection The Janus Hour, along with readings by Joanna Ezekiel, Jacqueline Gabbitas and Katherine Gallagher and a performance by terrific singer/songwriter Janis Haves. The collection is published by Oversteps Books and is available from me for £8 (£9, incl p&p), or from the Oversteps Books website.
1 & 2 July 10: Aprilia Zank, co-ordinator of the poetry p f poetry tREnD German translation project has initiated a festival, hoped to become an annual one, at the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich. 11 poets, all members of poetry p f, attended as readers and workshop presenters and a celebratory bilingual anthology POETRY TREND was launched. We read at the Literaturhaus and Lyrik Kabinett, alongside our translators, all very young and clearly with high-flying careers ahead of them! Academic price for the anthology, so 35 euros, but it’s 335 pages and beautifully produced. To enquire for copies, e-mail Aprilia Zank at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich.
Jun 10: The Haiti Benefit Concert in Broadstairs, organised by Maggie Harris. I have a poem in the specially commissioned anthology, 60 Poems for Haiti, and read with others of the poets included. The event was called Inscribing the Island Literature, A Concert for Haiti – “words, song, music & dance”. For copies at £9 and to support the cause, e-mail Ian Diaffenthaller at Cane Arrow Press.
and earlier in the year: Readings at The Troubadour (six poets) and Second Light’s May Madness festival (lots of readings, 3 really inspiring workshops) went down well. I have ‘words and images’ on the back cover of ARTEMISpoetry Issue 4, which came out at the end of May, as did Acumen 67, which includes an interview (of me with my poetry p f hat on) by William Oxley.
Links:
The Troubadour
Second Light Network
Buy ARTEMISpoetry poetry p f shop online (and type ‘Issue’ into the filter box)
Acumen
and this is a photo by Philippa Lawrence, taken when we were working on her pamphlet collection, From Memory’s Wardrobe. Speaking nicely to misbehaving machines works more often than you might think! Or is it the ‘laying on of hands’?
to buy From Memory’s Wardrobe: poetry p f shop online (and type ‘Wardrobe’ into the filter box)
Copyright © 2008 Anne Stewart. All rights reserved.
