Poets in Lancaster

I caught the train back to Manchester last night with Segun Lee-French, who was one of the readers at the launch of Flax018 at Lancaster's Storey Institute. We bonded over an unexpected love of early Psychic TV! The room at the Storey was a great venue, where the poets - all 6 of those featured in the anthology - were all given equal billing. It felt like the poems and the poets were prioritised, and, in the relaxed atmosphere of cabaret style seating with a glass of red wine, the audience were able to concentrate on the readings. Unusually, and what is the real USP, is that you can all read the poems from the ebook which is downloadable from their website. Segun's poems concerned his going to Nigeria, and finding, not the African spirituality he'd expected from his family there, but Christians, who were trying to convert him.

He wasn't the only poet to talk about "home" - and what that means - and its probably an unofficial theme of the anthology, called "The Crowd Without", to reflect the poet as outsider - like the bison away from the herd that adorns the attractive cover. I enjoyed all 6 of the poets reading, as they all read very well - though they were all very varied, making the anthology a book for readers, first and foremost. A special word for the precociousness of 20-year old Barnsley born, Lancaster-based student Andrew Macmillan, who read with a confidence like he'd been doing this all his short life. I'd been getting nostalgic about my own English degree at Lancaster which completed 21 years ago, and here was a current 2nd year student. A little humbling!

The Manchester Poetry Prize

MMU's writing school has just announced a poetry prize, closing date in September, for which you submit a portfolio of poems - to be followed next year, and perhaps of more interest to me, by a fiction prize. Though laudable, and with a substantial prize, £10,000, I was intrigued reading the small print, that the "portfolio" is between 3 and 5 poems, up to a maximum of 120 lines. With an entrance fee of £15, I guess its all right for the sonneteer, not so for the balladeer; and the long poem I wrote this week breaks the limits all on its own. On poetry competitions generally, I've not much confidence, having never come close to being shortlisted. There's something of a lottery about them, a winner takes all mentality, that's perhaps a little too competitive, that seems almost antithetical to what makes a good poem. Worth a punt, but nothing more. In this instance, the international nature of the competition and the high profile institution awarding it, will no doubt lead to them being swamped with entries. When I've been choosing poems myself either to send somewhere or to include in a magazine, I'm a bit like Philip Larkin, who, when asked how he chose which poems of his own to include in an anthology, said he would pick 'n' mix, one funny, one sad, one long, one short; but I'd imagine here that the judges will be looking for the consistency of work, so send in your very best.