A month in the life of a poetry editor…
January 26th - Again, my six weekend reading slots are full and more jaw-droppingly good poetry has landed on our (virtual) doormat. The bios these poets have been providing are like rollcalls of all the poetic-places-to-be-seen in the UK: a National Poetry Prize winner; a Bridport Prize winner; people with poems in Acumen, Orbis, Stand, Butcher’s Dog, Tears in the Fence, Poetry Wales … truth be told, (I think that last great poetry forum has made me come over all Nessa from Gavin and Stacey!), though a strong bio is always a good sign, we’re sometimes totally wowed by someone who has none of those credentials. One I’ve just put down has had me jumping up and down excitedly at its formal experimentation and poetic chutzpah!
January 18th - Gena and I have travelled north to Nantwich for the launch of Helen Kay’s fabulous new collection, ‘It Was Never About the Kingfisher’. A launch is a big moment for a poet. It’s also the culmination of a six-month cycle for us as her publishers. We do our best to sprinkle fairy dust (and cakes) on the event, which is another sellout - don’t you just love to see a room packed out with poetry aficionados and with standing room only at the back! We sell a healthy stack of books and conversations with local poets tell us that we’ll be seeing more submissions from the North-West and Wales in the near future…
January 15th - Today is the final day of the "Bournemouth Writing Prize". There's a bit of a crisis to wake up to: a flurry of emails that tell us that the entry portal has closed a day early!! Luckily, Bournemouth Writing Festival Director, Dominic Wong, is on the case - when is he not?!! - and a new final day link is created. Phew! Relax and read those remaining submissions.
January 11th - One of my favourite tasks as Lead Editor is writing a critique of each of the ten-page submissions we receive. It's one of our USPs at Dithering Chaps, to give you around 300 words of constructive critique (positive, while possibly noting one or two aspects that might be improved). Feedback from recipients of this feedback always tell us how helpful, uplifting and 'downright unusual' getting such feedback is. (I know this only too well from my own submissions to other publishers - elsewhere the best you can hope for is often the 'soft rejection' email - 'we'd like to see more of your work'.) Our view is - you've paid us a tenner to read your poems - the least we can do is tell your our reactions, even if we don’t choose to publish you. I limit myself to reading three submissions at any one time - again, this is only fair ... my mind needs to be fresh if I’m to be receptive to work that someone has nurtured and honed to the stage where they take the big step of submitting it. I read my three, write my comments and assign a mark to help me rank this reading period's submissions. I have several to carry forward to Sunday and, as I check back to our email, a couple more land in our in-tray...
January 7th - The first week of the new year brought a flurry of sales and submissions. It's a lovely feeling to know that our efforts to make ourselves known are reaping success. I make a submissions 'first reading list' for the weekend to clear this new backlog (and do my admin tasks of numbering, saving and logging these submissions). I can't resist taking a quick peek! As always, I find some submissions are so compelling in form or poetic verve that I find myself still 'flicking through' an hour later... I pop next door to let Gena (associate editor/wife) know that "we've got some good ‘uns" and find her hard at work creating video content for the final-week big push promoting the Bournemouth Writing Prize. As well as judging the shortlisted poetry entries this year, we've been tasked with using our social media and email contacts to get the message out. We've sent emails to the leads of over 900 writing groups worldwide (maxing out our Gmail quota over consecutive days) and Gena estimates that the social media groups we have posted to have over three million followers. Still, we know, from last year's 'Lines in the Sand' competition that at least half of competition entries will come in the final week, so we can't relax our efforts! Gena is a trained voice-over artiste and is getting very nifty with her film edits - she shows me her latest promo reel - great stuff - I hope you caught it! (If you haven't seen our films for recently published collections by Louise Walker and Helen Kay, searching for Dithering Chaps on Facebook, Insta, TikTok, X and Bluesky should hook you up!)