What makes a great poem?

Without subscribing to any kind of cultural cringe, I have to admit to sometimes looking at the American poetry publishing scene with envy -- poets like Ted Kooser and Billy Collins, Mary Oliver and Maya Angelou, who write amazing poetry that's brilliantly conceived and executed and yet easily accessible to most readers. Where are Australia's great poets writing in this vein? Yes, they are out there. We do have fantastic poets like Peter Bakowski, whose poems are gifts to the rest of us. As an editor of Poetrix, I am privileged to read the works of many amazing women poets, poets whose work I love like Asuncion Pritchett and Connie Barber. But we still don't have the breadth of great poetry that they have in the US, which I suppose is not surprising given we have a much smaller population base. It's to be expected. But is that all it is?

Peter Bakowski came into one of our poetry classes the other day and spoke to our second-year poetry students about his philosophy of the art and craft of poetry and his life as a poet. As always, his talk was from the heart (just like his poetry!) and informative -- packed with great advice. Bakowski spoke about the importance of clarity in poetry writing (something both Kooser and Collins advocate), and how reading obscure poems makes him either angry or tired. I know how he feels. If I read a poem and my first reaction is "huh?", I might put it down to tiredness. If I then take a walk or a break and come back to it fresh, reread it and think about it and my reaction is still "huh?", I don't think it's a successful poem -- at least not for me. I want to get something out of every poem I read, and ideally I'd like to get something on a first reading. That isn't to say that I don't enjoy poems that give me more, that unfold their secrets on deeper thinking or subsequent reads -- I do -- but I should at least get something on that initial read. I should know what the poem is about on a superficial level at least.

Last weekend, my friend Sherryl and I went to the Booktown weekend (Back to Booktown) at Clunes. So many bookshops! I think we both almost melted with pleasure on the spot. While she attended a masterclass on crime writing, I went bookshopping (note, I use that as one word because bookshopping is far superior to any other kind of shopping and deserves its own word!). Later, when she went bookshopping, I attended a panel on biography writing. One of the speakers was well-known poet and biographer, Peter Rose. I've heard Rose speak before -- and every time he speaks candidly about his experience as a biographer, I come away thinking I must read his book (Rose Boys). I am interested in football (go, Tigers!) and families, and I own one, maybe two, of his poetry collections, and from what I know of the story, from what I've heard him say, and from the reviews I've read, I expect Rose Boys to be a powerful read: elegantly written, insightful and moving. But I have to say he astounded me with what he had to say in this session -- not so much on biography writing, which did nothing to change my intent to read his biography, but on poetry writing.

Rose said that a biographer has to take the audience into his confidence (so far so good), which was a new experience for him. He said it was the exact opposite of what he was trying to do as a poet -- and at this point I sat straighter in my chair -- that a poet's job was to be as obscure as possible. What? Of course, I've read obscure poems published in prestigious places -- they always leave me shaking my head and wondering whether I really need to read such prestigious journals -- but to hear someone actually say this . . .

The audience laughed. And Rose laughed too, and called it the poet's badge of honour. I wasn't sure whether the latter was tongue-in-cheek or not, whether he was surprised by the audience's reaction, whether the laugh was a bit self-deprecating. I still don't know. Taking the audience into his confidence -- as I've said he said nothing that put me off reading his biography, but his thoughts on poetry writing did leave me thinking deeply on the state of Australian poetry.

Of course there are all sorts of readers, and as writers we need to celebrate this, because if we all liked the same kinds of stories, the same kinds of poems, we wouldn't have much need for as many writers as we have. Some of us love the elegance and strong characterisation of literary writing, while others find the lack of plot leaves them bored. Some of us love the fast action and pace of genre writing, while others consider it hack writing and a waste of time. Some of us no doubt love obscure poems -- although I sometimes wonder if it really is about the flip-side of that "badge of honour": no-one wants to admit they can't understand an obscure poem.

But look at poetry sales. They're hardly what I'd call scintillating. I have lots of friends who don't read poetry. At all. Ever. When I ask them why they don't like it, they usually shrug and tell me they don't understand it. I always suggest they try different poets -- try Bakowksi, try Kristin Henry -- but persuading them to give it another go isn't so easy. Not when it comes to spending hard cash. I have writer-friends who say the same thing about poetry writing. They don't like it because they find it incomprehensible. There's a lot to be said for clarity, I think.

The poems that I love usually have a strong focus on imagery, but sometimes it's a clever turn of phrase or an unusual metaphor that strikes me. They might give me new understanding -- put me into someone else's shoes or challenge my beliefs. They might make me laugh or cry or speak to me on a personal level about something I care about. They always communicate an idea to me -- something I can hang my understanding of the poem on. That isn't to say that they're simple poems, although they may be, but more usually they're not, and I'll be rewarded for thinking more about them. I subscribe to the inverse way of writing complex ideas -- that the more complex an idea is the more simple the expression needs to be to make it understandable. I do, after all, want to communicate something to my audience -- if I didn't, I don't think I'd bother to write.

But I'm interested in what others think -- what do you think makes a great poem? And how do you feel about obscure poetry -- is it clever or does it leave you cold? I'd love you to share your thoughts with me . . .

Currently reading

1. Poetrix submissions

2. Ada Cambridge entries (biographical writing) for shortlisting judging with my Novel 2 class

3. Student first chapters and synopses

4. Fight Club (Chuck Palahniuk) -- within a few pages of the end

5. Life of Pi (Yann Martel) -- about 1/3 way in and stalled because I can't find the book

6. Love in the time of cholera (Gabriel Garcia Marquez) -- about 1/4 way in and stalled because I can't find the book

7. The secret river (Kate Grenville) -- read this before, but am teaching it so am rereading it with my class. About 1/4 way through, currently.

8. The enchanted wood (Enid Blyton) -- it was around. I couldn't resist -- can never resist a book with Dick and Fanny as the main characters. (And of course that's far funnier in Australia than it is in the US.)

9. Emotional structure: creating the story beneath the plot: a guide for screenwriters (Peter Dunne). All right, I'm not a screenwriter and have no aspirations to be one -- I like my narrative too much -- but there are a lot of great books on how to write screenplays that have heaps of useful info for novel writers too.

And you have to love a book that has this on its opening page: ". . . you can only be a writer on the days you write. On the other days, the days you decide not to write, you will be something else. However, there is a caveat. On the days you decide to be a writer and you write, even if it's for only an hour, you get to be a writer for the other twenty-three hours, too. Pretty good, huh?"

I love it. Love the voice. Love what he's saying. I'm there. In for the long haul. Although, rather than read from beginning to end, I'll probably dip in and out, which I do with all my writing books. I'm constantly trawling through them. (And having done my tax the other day, I realised I'd spent over $700 on writing books in the last financial year. Eek! Husband is not happy. Admittedly, I did teach a new subject so was busy acquiring both textbooks and also compilations (of poetry) to draw on for my reader, especially given that Fair Trading means I'm quite restricted in how much I can use.)

What I'm looking forward to reading next:

World without end (Ken Follett). I bought myself this for my husband to give me for Christmas. I loved Pillars of the earth: so rich, so gripping, that I had to have the sequel.

The series beginning with Kushiel's dart (Jacqueline Carey), which comes to me highly recommended as fantasy that's completely different. I have perused it -- looks like it's going to be a -- er -- let's say racy read!

The Farseer Trilogy (Robin Hobb). Truth be told, I've dipped into this once before -- after I'd read the follow-up series The Liveship Traders, which I absolutely loved. I found I just didn't want to slip into first person -- and where were Althea and Brashen? -- but it was a cursory look that no doubt didn't do the series justice.

The time traveler's wife (Audrey Niffenegger), which was highly recommended by a student of mine. The concept sounds intriguing, and I've just been watching the rather funny "Lost in Austen" about a modern day girl who crosses through a time and I guess dimension (to do with the real and fictional worlds) portal into Pride and prejudice, so I'm ready for something in this vein.

I've always felt like I haven't read enough of the classics, but I've been focussing on addressing this a little over the last few years to the detriment of my genre reading. Now it's time to get back to some of the stuff that I love to read. (Though I've loved many of the classics too.)

Busy week

This week is a full on social week, and all to do with writing:

(i) Wednesday morning: launch of the Ada Cambridge exhibition at the VU library on the St Albans campus
(ii) Thursday night: dinner out with my Clarion South buddies -- or family as we are now -- where we will reminisce about that crazy six weeks where the temperature varied between 31 and 33 degrees every day and we had no air-con in our dorms, and we workshopped over half a million words, and most of us churned out a story a week and a collaborative story. I know I did. And kept a journal (50,000 words worth)
(iii) Friday: lunch out with Effy whom I taught Text and Culture, part of the Diploma of Liberal Arts, with. (All right, this is a teaching one more than a writing one.) Effy drove the subject, luckily, and I scrambled to keep ahead of the class, because I did not have a background in Arts. When they start teaching Haematology for Writers, I'll be right there!
(iv) Friday night: dinner out at a special performance as part of the Williamstown Lit Festival with Western Women Writers, Ellen from SuperNOVA, and Susanna from work.
(v) Saturday morning: attending the first session of the CBCA conference to see Shaun Tan's speech, and then to see Sherryl's new book Tracey Binns is trouble launched. With a character name like that, how could that not be close to my own heart.
(vi) Saturday: go to the Williamstown Literary Festival sessions and attend the prize-giving ceremony of the Ada Cambridge competition. Can't wait to see who wins! I've just found out that at least two of our students have been shortlisted, which is rather nice. Of course, when you're doing the shortlisting, you're looking at blind entries and have no idea who has entered, so it's always interesting later on to find out who the winners are, and whether any of them are even names that you've heard before.

And around all this I've been getting Poetrix ready to go to print, which means finishing typesetting and cobbling together bios (and then paring them back because they were too long), writing an editorial, having it ready for proofing by (last) Wednesday, proofing in writing group, now making the final corrections and then doing one more proofing pass. Should all be ready by tomorrow! Then I better get into my assignments.

Writers' group

Business as usual: talk, papers, cakes! (Which means publishing success.) No starving in our garrets here!


Well, I have been superbusy with work this week, one of the bane's of teaching a new subject (but also one of the joys!), and so I'm way behind on my blog again. And I have had so much to post about, but I wanted to do one about writing groups first. Honestly, writing groups can be the saver of sanity for many of us -- a chance to get together and talk books and writing (hmm, there's a blog title in that somewhere), and the whole publishing process with people who understand, truly understand, the passion, the drive. What better way to spend a few hours than talking writing! We will workshop, talk about articles (on writing) we've read and any new insights we've gleaned. Something I love about writing is that no matter how much you already know, there's always so much more to learn! I love it! The day I think I know everything (which I hope will never come -- on several levels, I hope this) is the day I give up writing!

The cakes: celebration of Sherryl's CBC shortlisting (fingers crossed here!), and Margaret having poems accepted into two different magazines


We celebrate the triumphs, and commiserate over the failures. We toast the near-successes -- for example, when I was recently shortlisted for the Aurealis Awards. I didn't win, but just being shortlisted was a fantastic thing. And a success in itself. And (for any members of Western Women), yes, er, I do realise that I haven't brought a cake along for that yet! It's coming, I promise! We work on Poetrix, our poetry magazine -- and indeed did that last week and this week, where we finalised selections for the next issue. It's a rich and varied experience. In the old days, we used to do a writing exercise each week. Sometimes we still write, sometimes we plot out the group novel or read excerpts, sometimes we workshop, and sometimes we attend to our social calendars. In the next few weeks (including this week), our group has (or has had) a book launch, the launch of the Williamstown Literary Festival, lunch out, the launch of the Ada Cambridge exhibition, a literary dinner and performance, another book launch, the Williamstown Literary Festival. Lots of stuff happening. And it's great. Keeps us on our toes, and makes us feel part of a literary community.

The vagaries of publishing: a fantastic writer laments the size of her latest royalty statement

Catching up: Poetrix launch

Between Christmas (no, actually, I haven't done anything about Christmas yet: no tree, no presents -- yet) -- all right, between social outings, a trip away to the Prom, having kids home from school for a couple of weeks and trying to write, I am way behind with my blogging. Life gets busier, which means there's more to blog about, but less time to do it, and writing has to come first. So forgive me for my lateness in posting all of this...

On Saturday 8 December, we had the launch of our latest issue of Poetrix at Federation Square. We don't "launch" many issues -- most go out into the world without such fanfare, but every now and then we like to remind ourselves of why we're doing this (which is to get great Australian poetry by women poets out to readers), and there's no better way than to have a launch and invite our subscribers and contributors to come along. Mostly, our launches coincide with round numbers -- so expect a launch with Issue 30! And sometimes we've done other things to celebrate as well -- so for Issue 10 we ran an acrostic competition (an acrostic, for anyone who doesn't know, is a poem in which the first letter of every line, when read together, spells something out, which like the title of the poem gives the poet a chance to add another layer to the poem).

The launch for #29 went really well. The Atrium is an airy space filled with light and framed by artistic "scaffolding" -- I love this kind of architecture! I remember being blown away in Paris by the Centre Georges Pompidou many years ago. You either love this sort of thing or you don't, and I do.

A number of our local poets came to read their poems, and the editorial committee read a selection from interstate poets, which we chose ourselves. I read Jude Aquilina's "Felis Domestica", a poem I absolutely love.

We shared space with readers from Small Change Press, a new Queensland poetry press, which was an interesting mix because our readers were all female and theirs all male (though one read a poem from one of their women poet's collections). I think we complemented each other well, though I think most of the audience was ours. Poets love to read their work (well, some do -- me, I've never been that keen on performing), so many of the audience were there to either read or to hear friends/family read. So the trick with pulling in a crowd to a poetry reading, if you don't have a lot of guest readers as we did, is to have an open mic session, but then, of course, it's potluck as to the quality.

The other thing we had was a professional photographer -- Rosina Lamberti, who is the Federation Square Events photographer. Great for me, as I forgot my camera!

The best part of all was meeting some of our contributors and supporters. Some we know, like Helen Cerne who is in Western Union Writers, Trudy Campbell, a past student of mine and Sherryl's, Lorraine McGuigan, editor of Poetry Monash, and some like Lerys Byrnes, I've only ever met on the page, so it's lovely to put faces to names. And then there are the long-time supporters, people like the wonderful Helen Annand, past editor of Centoria and past contributor to Poetrix who caught public transport in from Bendigo to be with us. It was Helen's first trip out for over a year, and having her make such an effort, having her tell us what a difference she thinks we are making or have made makes the effort put into publishing truly worthwhile. Thank you, Helen. We are equally appreciative of such loyalty. As we are from all our subscribers and those who contribute regularly. I must say we get some people who regularly send and are rejected, but they don't get put off, they keep sending stuff in, and nothing makes me happier than when they send something we finally love and can accept.

Photo courtesy of Rosina Lamberti

Line lengths and endings in poems

In workshopping our poems, Western Women Writers have had several discussions about line lengths and what dictates them. We've had visiting poets talk to us about how long lines should be. Some are of the Peter-Bakowski-keep-em-short school, and some are not. Line lengths do dictate flow as does enjambment.

None of us are of the a-poem-is-just-a-bit-of-prose-with-really-short-lines school, and sometimes our criticism of why a poem is not working is that it is too prosaic. Poems are their own form, and need to be working on their own terms.

In our professional development day the other day for work, a PWE (Prof Writing and Editing) teacher from another institute was talking about telling her students never to break a line after the word "the", and then the next week teaching a poem that, you guessed it, ended a line with the word "the". Of course students are invariably pleased when they see something like this, and will take great pains to point it out. "But last week you said..."

Yeah, we know, but that doesn't mean it's still not a good "rule" (and I use that word loosely) to observe. And it doesn't mean we didn't think that line might have been better served had the line been broken elsewhere. Or perhaps that this is a particularly effective breaking of the rule. Or that the teacher had an oh-shit moment when considering the poem, but decided to use it anyway because, though that line detracts, there's other elements that make it an excellent poem to study. Or that the teacher wants the students to remember that people break rules all the time.

The thing about breaking rules is that some do it well; some not so well, and the general rule of thumb is that the more experienced you are, and the more aware of the rules, the better you'll be able to break them. That's why I take great pains to teach my Editing students the grammar and punctuation rules -- not so they'll always write grammatically perfect sentences. Gotta love that sentence fragment! But so they'll learn how to break rules, how to tell if what they're doing is working and how to tell if it's not.

But, I'm digressing. Line lengths. What I find really interesting is whether we think poems with long lines are quicker or slower to read. Some say slower, because the lines are longer, and some same quicker because the lines aren't broken up as much. It is interesting because I think the reality is that they are quicker, but that there is a psychological thing that goes on when we seem them on the page that makes them feel slower. Does that make sense? Maybe it's dependent on whether we sound them out in our heads or not? I usually do when reading poetry.

The other aspect of line lengths is from the typesetting point of view. Can you tell what I've been doing this week? Yes, I'm typesetting Poetrix, and I had one poem with two lines that didn't fit on the page. In the old days I'd just carry the line over to the next, but I hate the look of it. I think it does disturb how the poem reads on the page. After all, poets put a lot of thought into where they should break their lines. Then I discovered WordPerfect's typesetter functions and learnt how to adjust letter and word spacing. This can often be done with no perceptible change on the page, so that things are squeezed up and I can get that last letter in and so the taken-over word moves back. But this time I had one line with three taken-over words, and I squeezed the text, but it was too much. The changes affected how the poem looked on the page, how readable the text was. It didn't work, so just as in the old days, I have one poem with a broken line.

As a poet myself, I wouldn't be happy about this, but it makes me think more about what magazines I'm targeting when I am sending poems out. For example, I have one poem that sits inside a diary entry of twenty years ago (before the fall of the Berlin wall) -- that poem needs a journal that's at least A4 size, and I wouldn't send it anywhere else. Poetrix is A5. As a poet I wouldn't have sent it to us. I'm not suggesting don't send us poems with long lines -- far from it. What we want to see is everyone's best work. But I'm saying, as a writer, not editor, that we should all be thinking about our line lengths, what best serves the poem, when we're sending out to markets, and most importantly when we're writing.

My pet hate

Today, among other things, I've been reading subs for Poetrix, and I was all set to blog about the wonders of discovering the perfect image embedded in a poem, and more on our editorial process, when I came across one of my pet hates. And maybe this is a pet hate because I do the typesetting, and more than once we have been caught out with people who have submitted to multiple publishers, but my pet hate is people who write in their cover letter "...and if I have not heard from you in three months I will feel free to send my work elsewhere". Excuse me while my blood chocolates on the way to boiling. (Old microbiology term -- at around fifty-six degrees C, blood denatures and turns a lovely chocolate colour.)

This particular offender was dated 31 May, so quite possibly the poems I was reading are now doing the rounds somewhere else. I am a writer too, so I know it's a frustrating game of waiting. I get it -- I really do. And I get that some places do hold onto stuff forever -- and perhaps we seem guilty of that too, but the fact remains that every issue has in the prelims our closing dates: 28 February and 31 August. Now, these dates have not changed in the over-ten-years that we have been producing the magazine. We have been very open about how we operate. We do not read submissions as they come in, but pool them and begin reading after the closing date. It's really up to you to find out what those dates are if you want to time limit how long we have to read. It's a fair guess that if you send your work on 31 May, you're not going to make the 28 Feb deadline. And if you're only going to let us hold them three months, then that expires on ... wait for it ... yes, 31 August, which gives us exactly zero days to formulate a response.

We have a committee that reads all poems, which means they have to circulate between at least five of us. Want to keep us to three months? Then try sending just before the closing date. I realise that not everyone can buy a copy of every magazine, but if you're not prepared to do the groundwork, then don't limit time this way. As I said, I get it. But writers need to get that this work we do in bringing out a magazine is a labour of love. We don't get paid for it. We try to break even so the magazine at least pays for itself, but we spend many hours reading and considering submissions, making selections, having editorial meetings, collating work, typesetting, proofreading, sending out acceptances and rejections and then putting it all together and mailing it out to submitters or subscribers. (And my pet love is all our subscribers -- you guys keep us alive, and we really do appreciate that!) We need to streamline our work too. Writers who do time-limit their work may feel they're taking a professional approach, but I see it as someone who either doesn't understand or doesn't care to understand the process. It means that we now have to do extra work contacting the author to find whether or not their work is still available. Honestly, editors are looking for reasons to reject your work. Don't ever give them a reason to say no.

Sorry about the rant, but my blood is ever so slowly turning brown.

Layout

Yesterday, we had our Western Women's Writing meeting, and I was supposed to have Poetrix ready to proof. I had done all the typesetting of the poems but hadn't actually got around to laying them out properly, and had set aside the morning to do that. All very well, but then my parents showed up unexpectedly -- and I felt rude telling them that sorry, I couldn't entertain them because I had work to do. That's the perennial problem in working from home: people expect you are available for whatever it is they want. Anyway, I did feel rude, but did it anyway. That's part of professionalism really, isn't it? That work hours have to be work hours. Discipline. Bum on seat. All of that. Trouble was that the dog was so excited to see them that she then proceeded to vomit all over the carpet in the study. Nice. Reminder to self: don't leave things till the last minute because stuff happens.

So, I got onto the layout. Poetrix is a smallish magazine -- we have thirty-two pages of poems, including one poem from a group member. Occasionally, we'll go to thirty-six pages if we're really pushed for space (ie if I cannot possibly make it fit), but we prefer not to do this. And it's an extra four pages because we're A5 size, so one sheet of A4 gets folded in half which gives four extra pages (back and front).

So first I look at how many pages I have, and I had nearly forty, so had to start thinking about doubling up poems. I use WordPerfect to do the layout. I won't start ranting about how much I love this program here, or I'll never talk about layout. So my next step is to use a two-page view, and just get an overall feel for how long the poems are. Depending on how many pages I have, the organisation of the poems can be a simple process of just jamming a short one or two at the end of one or two long ones, or it can be a complex mathematical procedure where I have to count lines to jostle things to fit.

My next step is to choose the opening and closing poems. The opening poem should be really strong. It may not necessarily be the strongest or best, but should be one of the best. One limiting factor is that it can't run for more than a page. In the last two issues I've chosen poems that have a strong visual image -- this was particularly important last time because I had to rotate the text ninety degrees to fit it on the page. I did this by doing it as a text box and making the box invisible. The lines were far too long to fit on the page and couldn't be broken because it was a shape poem. Anyway, it wouldn't have looked good facing text going the other way, and page 1 is the only one that has a blank verso (left hand page). And it was a terrific poem anyway -- very strong.

The end poem also needs to be one of the best because it leaves the reader with their final impression of the collection. So I'm looking for something that ends well, and leaves the reader thinking.

Then the fun begins. Poems that spill over a page have to be on facing pages; if they run to three then they should start on a recto (right hand page), so that they end on facing pages. It's interesting when we have themes come through -- and they seem to in each issue -- for example, this issue has three poems on Japan, all by different poets. Why Japan? I don't know. Sometimes it's good to sit themed things together, but sometimes it isn't. If there's a run of six or so poems on death, for example, the reader might get bogged down in bleakness. A really strong poem might overshadow another poem with a similar subject. Some poems complement each other. It's an interesting process -- one sometimes dictated by the space considerations and poem lengths.

It's an interesting process -- sometimes time-consuming, sometimes frustrating (that poem that's just one line too long, and then I have to start thinking about how much to carry over), but it's something I always enjoy.

Typesetting and bios

Last night and today I've been doing the typesetting for Poetrix. I rather enjoy typing up the poems because it gives me a better feel for the poets' rhythms. I have to say that this issue is a particularly diverse one with lots of scientific words, which almost made me go gooey inside. I would list them all here, but I've done an unusual thing in that I've done the typesetting before we've actually sent out the rejections and acceptance letters. It's just that the mood hit me, strongly, so I asked Sherryl if I could take them home straightaway, and bring them back tomorrow (that was yesterday, so today). So none have been sent yet -- not that I expect any of the Poetrix submitters are likely to be reading this.

I'm less enthused about typing up the bios. Some authors present me with nice succinct bios that I can just put in as is, but many give me none, in which case they get a "So and So is a poet who lives in Such and Such", which I always find a bit bland. However, I totally respect that some poets may prefer to remain anonymous, or may shy about sharing something about themselves, and that's fair enough. Interestingly, when I'm doing the typesetting, they always seem to be together alphabetically, so I'll have four in a row like this, then several full ones, then another four one-liners.

Lots of poets give me too many lines and then it's up to me to craft their bios. How much crafting I do depends on how squeezed I am for space (decided by how many poets we've accepted, and how many of these are one-liners), how long the bios are, how pressed for time I am and, yes, I hate to admit it, but how good a mood I'm in. Many are long lists of magazines the poets have been published in. I have mixed feelings about these. On the one hand, they are as boring as all get-up to read; on the other, they make the newer poet aware of some of the markets out there. I much prefer the more-personal bios that tell me something about the poet as a person.

Good information to include is a list of the poet's books if she (and I can safely say "she" because Poetrix only publishes women's poetry -- as a result of a very real gender imbalance and bias by some of the male editors who were around at the time of Poetrix's inception). Again, titles let newer and more established poets know who's publishing collections, but also it's a chance for the poet to market something they can sell. As a reader and writer, I'm far more impressed by a collection than a list of magazine titles, perhaps because I have the latter myself, but not the former?

What I don't see much of are silly bios -- they seem to be more prevalent in SF magazines, and some of my friends write these. Sometimes they're pretentious. Sometimes they're wacky and amusing. Sometimes they're just nonsensical. I'm ambivalent about these. Occasionally, I think they give me a sense of the writer's personality, but more often I just think they look unprofessional. I've done them myself in the past, but not in the last few years. I must admit I hate writing bios. Mine always seem boring -- a statement of facts, but at least I don't have to worry that some editor might read over it and think me a total nut.

So back to today's. I try to treat all author's the same, ie allot them all the same number of lines. If they don't use their quota, that's fine, and if they exceed it, then snip, snip. I start with maybe five or six lines each, then whittle down. I think that in this issue, bios will run to five lines, but sometimes it's only three. Today I've edited by the newspaper principle -- ie assuming the writer put the most important information first. However, for one author it meant the long list of magazines got in, and the collection didn't, so I cut the list. I'd rather cut the whole list than a few titles in it (though I did leave in some Best of... titles, as they are more impressive). So, tomorrow, I'm returning the poems, which will give me a break so that when I do the first round of proofs my eye is fresh. Then the group will do a second round of proofs later. I'll sit out at that stage, because by then I'm too familiar with the work, and the mistakes will all be my own, so I'm more likely to miss them. Proofreading is a slow and laborious process, but oh what a difference it makes.

Poetrix meeting

Today, Western Women Writers had our Poetrix meeting. I'm not sure how many other magazines manage their submissions by editorial committee or for those who do how crazy their meetings are, but this one was a doozy. We always have fun -- and this has been heightened by our adapting visual cues to indicate whether or not we like a poem. It's much quicker than having to go around the circle, and everyone saying yes or no. So a vertical arm above the head is a yes, a horizontal arm position in front of the body is a maybe, and a maybe-yes (for those of us fence-sitting) is a diagonal position in between yes and maybe.

But today Margaret one of our members was sick and couldn't attend the meeting, so I had to be two people -- my left arm was my responses and my right arm was hers. I had trouble enough keeping track of who was doing what, but when we both said yes, I felt like a cricket umpire indicating a six.

I'm not sure why the hilarity level was so high, other than that we had started in high spirits anyway, but I joked that Margaret must be the serious one because we were almost besides ourselves today. Much discussion of the poems followed, and led to some intriguing oneliners. Five of us comprised the committe this time, and a poem needed at least three yeses to get in, and two yeses and two maybes to get on the maybe pile. Once we'd finished going through them all, Sherryl counted the number of poems, and estimated the extent of the mag at this stage, and then we started on the maybe pile, and this was when the fun (and negotiation) really began. Two of us "stood on the table" for poems today -- poems that we felt really strongly about but which didn't have a big enough consensus to get in. We figure if someone feels strongly enough to fight for it, then it's probably a worthwhile inclusion. (Metaphorically standing on the table is a tradition that dates back to the early days of Poetrix when Lissa, one of our members, fought for one that we all didn't like, and we all said no, so she read it out to us, and we said no, so she read it out in a louder voice, and we said no, and so she read it even more forcefully, and we said no, and someone told her she had to get on the table to read it, and she said she would, and we decided then that she felt so strongly we should just accept it or she'd never shut up. Then, lo and behold, we got a letter from someone who said they loved that poem. I think that was a lesson to all of us, one we've learnt well from.

Anyway, we had lots of great poems for this issue, which made the competition fierce -- a problem all editors welcome, I'm sure. By the end of the session, we felt like we'd done a good job. Now comes the worst part: sending out the rejection letters. Depressing, because we're all writers and understand what it's like to receive them. But the reality is that we can't accept everything we receive, and perhaps, in the long run, that makes those acceptence letters so much more worthwhile.

Writing group at the movies!

Every Wednesday, my writing group, Western Women Writers meets. Generally, we alternate what we do: one week it's writing and the next workshopping. Occasionally, we have Poetrix editorial meetings or other "business" type activities. Very occasionally we do something different. Today, being school holidays and all, we went to the movies to see Becoming Jane, a movie about Jane Austen's life and a possible romance that she had.

I love the movies at the best of times. I'll go at the drop of a hat -- pardon the cliche -- if time allows it. Often it doesn't. I'm too busy marking or caught up with kids' stuff or whatever. But movies about writing are a double bonus. And there seems to be a few of them out at the moment. Last week, Sherryl and I saw Freedom Writers, which I loved and would like to take my kids to. And there's Miss Potter, which I haven't made it to yet. I'd better hurry for that one or I'll miss out.

So, a small group of us went, had lunch, workshopped a story and then went back to Jane Austen's time. I must say I enjoyed this movie, but I'm a bit of a sucker for a historical romance. And for green landscapes, which seem to be a foreign thing in much of drought-stricken Australia. Even when it is green here, it's not that green. The first time I was struck by that was when I went to New Zealand in my early twenties. I couldn't get over the colours. Ditto when I went to England a couple of years later.

My daughter, who tagged along to the movie, thought it was too mushy and boring. I didn't think it was either of these things, but that's teenagers. She just wants the latest violent horror story, and knows I'm going to say no to it. While I don't mind a bit of movie violence myself (like Helm's Deep for example), I try to restrict what they see, which isn't to say that they're not allowed any -- they have seen the Lord of the Rings films for example -- but I am mindful about how much exposure (and whether it's gratuitous or not). I think all parents have lines, but we all draw them in different places, and each of us must decide what's right for our own families.