Posts by admin:
Call for Readers
July 18th, 2011We are recruiting new seven (7) readers to replace our current set of readers who have been working with us for 18 months. We use readers in 6-month cycles and, at the end of a cycle, each reader can decide whether to start a new cycle or not.
The workload tends to be a maximum of two manuscripts a month for fiction and four a month for poetry. We are recruiting a reader for non-fiction for the first time as we develop a popular culture list so we don’t know what the load is likely to be. If you would like to be a reader, please prepare a book report – using the rough guidelines below: for prose fiction or non-fiction (2 pages) or poetry (1 page) and send it to use at books [at] flippedeye [dot] net.
[Guidelines] For fiction, your book report should include a plot outline, a critical assessment and an overall recommendation. For non-fiction you should give an overview of the book’s subject and argument, an assessment of the author’s authority and the uniqueness of the approach, some commentary on prose style and suitability for a general audience, and an overall recommendation. Poetry reports can focus on just the first eight poems of a chosen book and should include some commentary on the originality and appeal of the writer’s ideas and perspectives, the success or failure of the use of form to complement content, prosody, style (e.g. formal, experimental) and subject range/depth.
[What's Next?] If you are selected, you will be sent some guidelines outlining our in-house format for reader’s reports and then you will be sent work fortnightly or monthly depending on workload. You’ll also be sent a couple of our books for your library. When you’re done, you’ll also have one of our great references at hand whenever you need one.
DEADLINE: August 15, 2011
A way to read a poem
February 16th, 2011Adapted from an essay on teaching poetry on Nii’s website:
What we run on when we run about poeting
The original essay was delivered as a lecture for Writers Centre Norwich
“Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety.” — James Baldwin (from Nobody Knows My Name)
I introduce this short lit-byte with James Baldwin’s quote because I believe that if we read a good poem openly, it always changes us – unfortunately, we often don’t open ourselves to the experience of a poem if we can’t immediately make sense of it, or it doesn’t fit in with our conception of ‘traditional’ poetry. To my mind, when reading a poem, we must remember that poetry works in tandem with its environment and that environment includes you – the reader. Just as the sensation of running is strongly linked to the world around the runner (the temperature, humidity etc. affect how the run feels), so the experience of a poem is linked to the world around the reader. Words are triggers and carry meanings well beyond the scope of the dictionary. A reader or listener who has lost someone close to them whose favourite word was ‘blossom’ will react very differently to an encounter with the word in a poem than someone who does not have that personal history. This indefinable human element is one of the key reasons why one has to let oneself and others develop their own relationship with a poem before imposing opinions. Beyond text there is sound, and the internet offers us a unique opportunity to bring poems alive by playing videos of poets reading their own work – allowing comparisons between performance and representation on the page. More importantly, it is another way to experience poetry, to engage with the feelings that poetry evokes.
Watching a child learn language is probably the best instruction of what engaging with poetry should be like; it may take ages for the meaning to become clear to us, but it should not stop us enjoying it. Children begin to use words that they like the sound of long before the meanings become clear to them, and they create beautiful juxtapositions by doing so. It also means that we can engage them with what seems like nonsense poetry and they will make their own sense of it, whereas an adult might seek to draw a specific meaning from the work. This search for meaning is what our educational systems teach us to do, so in a way I guess I am suggesting that the reading of poetry must be, to some degree, counter to what we’ve been taught; it must deviate from the obsession with logic and fact. Indeed, one of our leading contemporary poets, Don Paterson remarked on this in a recent article in the Guardian discussing his re-reading of Shakespeare’s sonnets. He makes a distinction between a ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ (the analytical kind we tend to do in school) reading of poetry, saying:
“a primary reading doesn’t have to articulate its findings. It engages with the poem directly, as a piece of trustworthy human discourse – which doesn’t sound too revolutionary, but the truth is that many readers don’t feel like that about poetry any more, and often start with: “But what does it all mean?” on the assumption that “that’s how you read poetry”.
Essentially, simple appreciation of the beauty of ideas and language is often lost.
I often think that the moment we stop running in corridors is the moment we need to make a conscious effort not to be too analytical when we first encounter a poem. There is something about that abandon, the possibility of bumping into someone, the acute alertness that aids us if we have to swerve or stop suddenly, that contains all the breathless quests that poetry emerges from. The human and the environment, the traveller and the land, the lover and the terrain of sentiment, the child and the family tree – we must run through it all with no harness, no fear. Poetry is an act of faith.
The Blog Virgin: Me & Technology
August 27th, 2010Technology and me could never be seen as friends, computers are glorified word processors, my iPod had 27 songs on it for two years and I have just figured out how to record programme on my Sky Plus box. So I am a true blogging virgin if ever there was one. Be gentle with me and read very quickly lest this be littered with mistakes.
A little about myself – My name is Janett Plummer and I am a Birmingham-based writer of poetry and short stories mainly. Not to be confused with another London poet called – yep, ya guessed it Janet Plummer with one “T” instead of my two. Loooooooooooooooong story but we have spoken. I can confirm the other is real and does indeed also write poetry and live in the Capital City. Different styles of writing separate us luckily. Check her out and decide for yourself.
Currently I am reading The Help – love it, love it, love it: good ideas, authentic voice and it evokes the mood of the times. One of those can’t put that book down until you finish it. I’m also loving a gospel artist Onitsha recording with Living waters studios, funky, contemporary and yet packing a good punch. Non believers will love it in a “Take my Shackles off my feet so I can dance” kinda way that got you into Mary Mary back in the day. And, I am loving Luther the BBC drama; only just caught up with it, although the 100% success rate at catching criminals surely puts him at the top of the top techs league. Yes I know it was on ages ago but I had to go all the way to Holland to catch up on it, spending a precious day out of my holiday on catching up on this brilliant series (albeit four months later than everyone else!)
From the blog virgin
P.S I think I started this blog thinking that I was going to come out with something deep and meaningful about technology, Macs versus PC’s for writers but I guess that’s another topic for another day.
MWAH XXX
lifemarks
Janett Plummer is the author of lifemarks, a poetry pamphlet under our mouthmark series.
the downsides of growth
August 11th, 2008When I started out as an editor, one of my favourite things was to finish my ‘working day’ and then settle down to read the unsolicited manuscripts we had received during the day. Conscious of my own frustrations as a writer, rarely hearing back from editors when I sent work out (sometimes even when my work was used I found out after the fact!), I spent time writing comments on the manuscripts and sent replies within a week or two. It was great for a while; I was only getting about eight unsolicited MSS a week and the flow was very manageable. In fact, I started to meet people who would come up to me and say, Oh, thank you so much for your feedback on my poem – it was very helpful and I had a lady who had a short story published in a journal after she got me suggested edits. At the time I was only responsible for three writers and was able to edit a quarterly magazine called x magazine (which is where half the unsolicited MSS came from – for some reason people think if you publish a magazine you can publish anything!).
Of course, it wasn’t to last. Soon I had seven authors and I was missing deadlines for x magazine (the latest issue is currently 7 months delayed). In another year we had won some accolades and the unsolicited manuscript volume became incredible. To give you some perspective, after we won our first PBS Pamphlet Choice we received forty manuscripts in two weeks. There was no way my old ways were going to survive – no way! It’s the very real trade off that has to happen as a small press grows in reputation and its backlist starts to demand administration hours.
So now, I respond to most MSS by e-mail if I get to it and if I don’t like the work I don’t bother responding – it’s way too much work. In some ways I have become the editors I thought treated me so unfairly, but I like to tell myself I’m different because I still feel guilty about not responding and I still write to anyone who sends me something I like – even if it’s not good enough for us yet. If I don’t like it… Well, it’s a rough world out there – sorry »»
