Statement Regarding Recent Plagiarism
On Friday, US poet Charles O Hartman (current Professor and Poet in Residence at Connecticut College) contacted us to let us know that the poem ‘Dead Wife Singing’, posted on IS&T on 8th April, is virtually identical to ‘A Little Song’ which he wrote more than three decades ago and subsequently published in his collections of 1982 & 2008.
We quickly removed the poem from the site and have also sidelined any further contributions from the plagiarist (who, to his credit, has apologised) after it was revealed that his practice was widespread. We will do the same to any contributor found to have committed extensive plagiarism even if IS&T is not initially affected.
We do not take plagiarism lightly. Actions like this devalue our webzine, hurt the reputation of poetry in general and are an affront to the creative efforts and emotional experiences of the plundered poets. As frustrating as it may be to be at the end of constant rejection slips and emails, please believe that your worst poem is far better than a cut and paste version of someone else’s. And there are any number of residential weeks, courses, surgeries and on-line feedback services (including our own) to help hone your craft.
From now on, we will be conducting random checks on accepted submissions. However, we cannot catch everything and we therefore encourage anyone who suspects that one of our posts may be ‘borrowing’, in whole or in part, to let us know immediately.
Professor Hartman’s original, emphatically superior and quite breathtaking ‘A Little Song’, can be found in his collection The Pigfoot Rebellion archived in the Contemporary American Poetry Archive (CAPA)
Kate Birch Publisher IS&T
Read MoreA poem and an interview with Jennifer Grey, the 2012 recipient of the new Ink Sweat & Tears Poetry Writing Scholarship at the University of East Anglia.
Seven Conversations with the Undertaker
I
You turn the lights on when you come home: tobaccoflame, click, spark.
II
You put splinters in your hands at work again, shutting the lids one by one. You close your eyes. I ask about tetanus jabs. You put your green thumbpalm on my blue wristvein, stifle the pulse.
III
you touch my hand/my bones fray/your bones touch/my hand is frayed/you fray my touch/my hand bones/hands on bones/you fray me/you fray me
IV
We turn our backs in bed. Your fingertips leave cysts, hiving up my breast. I count them one on one on one.
V
At the dinner table, you fiddle with your fork. I send you smoke signals. You lick out the ashtray.
VI
i dreamed my lungs – grew little trees – within each alveoli – which grew and shed – and split out through me – slid right through my ribs - my god just watch me grow a headdress headstone headpiece over this
VII
At the twelve week scan, doctors slam out cardiacspeak. You send a text: don’t wait up.
Seven Questions
1. Where do you write? (do you have an office, room, bus journey that you find yourself and your writing?)
I mainly write in my bedroom with the curtains closed, sometimes in the absolute dark. This can make it very hard to see what I’m doing. I also have to have black tea, no sugar, preferably by the gallon.
2. How do you write? (into a notebook or straight onto a computer?)
I always write onto a computer. I’m a big fan of the delete key. My notebooks are just lots of lines crossed out for the first three pages and then blank, because the mess has upset me so much I’ve been forced to abandon the notebook.
3. Roughly how much time do you spend each week on creative writing related activities? (writing, editing, correspondence & submissions)
I’d like to say I try for at least seven hours (an hour a day) but that might be a lie. Sometimes lots more, sometimes lots less. It depends how much tea there is in the house.
4. What time of day do you usually write?
Any of the times during which I can wear pyjamas. I’d like to say that means either first thing in the morning or last thing at night, but it’s more likely to actually be halfway through Sunday lunch. I like pyjamas.
5. What does it feel like to write?
Like a cross between a massive relief and a massive panic attack. Exactly like falling into a fast flowing river and simultaneously remembering that you’re both an Olympic standard swimmer and hydrophobic.
6. Are there any stimuli that will usually trigger you into writing?
If I could pinpoint that, I’d be a much better writer! Or at least a more prolific one. I tend to be in the middle of something completely unrelated and just find myself playing word games in my head. If I find them acceptable, I write them down.
7. What are you working on now?
A poem for the Writers’ Centre Norwich 26 for Norwich project about the writer Amelia Opie. Unfortunately, all of the poems I’ve tried to write about Amelia Opie recently have ended up being about something completely unrelated, such as the Apocalypse, which is a bit daunting.
This annual Scholarship is available for students wishing to study for the MA Creative Writing: Poetry degree course and will contribute to the recipient’s full course fees for one year. Established by Kate Birch, a friend of the University, the Scholarship is named after Ink Sweat & Tears – a creative writing webzine run by Kate and edited by Bloodaxe poet Helen Ivory – which celebrates poetry, prose poetry and short fiction and promotes work that combines word and image. The Ink Sweat & Tears Poetry Writing Scholarship will be awarded by the Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Academic) on the recommendation of a Selection Committee from the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. Find out more about the IS&T Scholarship here.
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Aldeburgh Poetry Festival
The 2012 Poetry Festival is less than a week away and from tomorrow, Ink Sweat and Tears will be featuring poems on the theme ‘Poetry as a Lifeline’ which is the subject of the IS&T-supported Discussions and Short Takes this year. Contributors include a number of the poets involved in these events and we are also featuring a poem, from Short Takes poet Andrea Porter, on our new postcards which will be available at the Snape venues.
Read MoreAldeburgh Poetry Festival
Ink Sweat and Tears is thrilled to announce that we are once again supporting the Discussion and its associated Short Takes at the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival, which runs from 2-4 November.
The theme of this year’s Discussion is ‘Poetry as a Lifeline’ which topic will be debated and dissected, vigorously no doubt, on the Saturday afternoon by Ingrid de Kok, Fellow and Professor in Extra Mural Studies at the University of Cape Town, Palestinian- American physician and translator Fady Joudah, Jackie Kay, professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle (who also brings a Nigerian perspective to the table) and Palestinian novelist, editor and poet Ghassan Zaqtan. This collective of ’intimate knowledge of the way that poetry can offer survival strategies when faced with a range of extreme situations’ will be chaired by Robert Seatter.
In the perfect little 15 minute vignettes that are the Short Takes, D. Nurkse, Andrea Porter, Sam Willets and Warsan Shire will all ‘speak for themselves’ on the theme.
For the week leading up to the Festival and throughout it, we will be posting work on the ‘Lifeline’ theme and invite anyone interested in being a part of this to submit in the usual way with the Subject Heading ‘IS&T SUBMISSIONS: LIFELINE.’ Closing date for submissions will be 10th October.
And if all this does not have you excited about Aldeburgh then have a look at the short film here from The Poetry Trust that looks at the Festival’s journey over the years and its natural expansion into the superb facilities at Snape Maltings.
Read MorePoetry Unbound – Call for Submissions
Based at the Norfolk and Norwich Millennium Library and launched on this year’s World Book Night with readings from George Szirtes and Heidi Williamson, Poetry Unbound is a new project which aims to extend the audience for contemporary poetry in Norfolk by showcasing the work of local poets in the UK’s busiest public library. Open to submissions from poets of all ages and levels of experience, the project comprises a prominent display of the poems selected on the library’s ground floor along with a new collection of poetry titles and regular poetry events. Selected poems will also be added to an online archive to be enjoyed by readers around the globe.
Email poetryunbound@gmail.com with any questions, or go to http://poetryunbound.tumblr.com to find out more.
Read MoreSome thoughts on poetry from Peter Daniels
Round up the usual precepts: a poetry manifesto
Poetry is what you can get away with.
There are rules, and ways to break them. There are boundaries, some breakable, some not.
The poem means itself inside a space between poet, reader and subject matter. This triangle has flexible sides, but is within the world of shared existence, shared consciousness of a subject, shared language.
Poems are made of language, and contained in meaning.
You can break the meaning barrier once historically (Dada), you probably have to break it at least once as an individual, but meaninglessness is worthless in itself.
The value in ritually breaking the barrier is to remind us it keeps out the chaos.
Chaos is a dead end as a destination, but you can bring things over from it (Eliot’s “raids on the inarticulate”).
Nurture the reader’s trust, trust the reader’s understanding.
Poetry depends on being simultaneously opaque and transparent. It can’t be only one or the other. The pebble and the pool.
The poem exists in real time, during which the ripples are spreading.
Almost any poem has to be read twice, first for strangeness, second for clarity.
New formalists and the avant garde are hobbyists, trainspotting rather than travelling.
Trainspotters are harmless, and can be good for standards: they notice things, though usually only one class of thing.
Poetry is for noticing things, not only attention-seeking for poets.
Enjoyment, engagement, awareness.
Which includes awareness of poetry’s own general uselessness; and exceptions to this.
Patience, humility, courage.
Borrowing pictures for poems is laziness: here’s something Rembrandt made earlier. Observe the life he observed and make your own pictures.
Borrowing music is another laziness. I’m Frank O’Hara and this is what’s on the jukebox in this cool café. Poems make their own music.
We are many, living in a mass culture, sharing a lot of subject matter. You can’t ban subjects but the value is in the telling. Shared cultural reference isn’t enough to rely on, either.
Listen to your betters and your peers, and follow your instinct.
The road of excess is worth taking; also the road less travelled.
Identity poetry gets boring, but the issues are still live.
A grudge is probably essential but some grudges are unproductive, especially grudges about poetry.
Poetry needs reading aloud, because language must have a mouth.
Poetry needs putting on a page, so you can see it in front of you.
Reading aloud and publishing poetry should be done well.
The poem is what matters, not the poet. Poems don’t happen without poets, but good ones may get a life of their own.
Peter Daniels has won several prizes – first prize in the 2010 TLS Poetry Competition, the 2008 Arvon Competition, the 2002 Ledbury competition, and was twice a winner in the Poetry Business pamphlet competition. His publications: pamphlet Mr Luczinski Makes a Move (HappenStance, 2011); first full collection Counting Eggs (Mulfran) and translations of Vladislav Khodasevich (Angel Books). Find out more here: www.peterdaniels.org.uk
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A poem and an interview with Eleanor Stewart, the 2011 recipient of the new Ink Sweat & Tears Poetry Writing Scholarship at the University of East Anglia.
By The Icarian Sea
It was a good orange, firm
but with a spring to it.
Shepherd cast a glance
towards his sheep (all there)
then dug a fingernail in.
It was a good orange.
He proceeded, with care,
to carve out a land for himself,
smiling when the peel came away
in one piece in his hand.
He turned it this way and that
and pondered on what map it could be,
if he knew any geography.
He considered throwing it
at Ploughman, a little to his left,
but thought the better of it
(Ploughman had muscles).
Instead he threw it out to sea
in a high, wide arc,
where the wind caught it
and turned it to a scudding,
orange-bellied gull.
Shepherd watched its flight
leaning from the cliff-edge,
devouring juicy segments.
There was a mass of foaming feathers
amongst the crests and peaks
of waves and more carried by the breeze.
One caught, sticky, in his fingers
and he wondered what strange
bird it came from.
The orange peel fell.
And in his last breath
before the water,
Icarus thought that the
sun had decided
to fall with him.
Eight Questions
1. Where do you write? (do you have an office, room, bus journey that you find yourself and your writing?)
If I sit down to write a poem, it’s usually at home in my room (I currently live in a shared student house). If the weather is good then I might attempt to write outside although this doesn’t tend to prove very productive as I get too easily distracted by passing wildlife or overheard conversations.
2. How do you write? (into a notebook or straight onto a computer?)
Preliminary ideas and very rough workings of poems – an odd line or two – go down in a notebook, but I generally write and edit full drafts on my laptop as I find it really helps to be able to move things around easily.
3. Roughly how much time do you spend each week on creative writing related activities? (writing, editing, correspondence & submissions)
At the moment I aim to write at least one poem a week, in order to keep up with the demands of the MA. The amount of time spent writing varies from poem to poem but I like to spend a good few days, preferably weeks, just thinking about a possible poem and perhaps researching it, too. An invaluable part of the MA is the workshop session, which is three hours per week, sometimes followed by a half hour tutorial.
4. What time of day do you usually write?
At any time of day, though most often in the evening.
5. What does it feel like to write?
Writing the first draft of a poem often feels quite instinctive, perhaps because I’ve usually spent a lot of time contemplating a poem beforehand. It can feel exhilarating. After the intuitive first draft, though, I’m beset by doubts and anxieties and the harder work begins.
6. Are there any stimuli that will usually trigger you into writing?
I find myself more and more inspired by art in other mediums; paintings, sculptures or other artifacts. Listening to instrumental music often puts me in a good frame of mind for writing, too. I’m a member of the UEA Choir and often find that Monday evenings after rehearsals are usually quite productive in terms of poetry – there’s something about singing in a group that feels amazingly uplifting and invigorating. Perhaps engaging with different art forms alerts me to a wider range of poetic possibilities.
7. What are you working on now?
At the moment I’m working on a collection of twelve poems to submit for assessment on the MA. I use the term collection loosely, though, as there isn’t a particular unifying force. The course so far has been a wonderful opportunity to experiment with different voices and forms and to follow my own interests, exploring subjects such as classical myth, the natural world and the paintings of Bruegel.
8. How has the scholarship affected your writing?
I feel immensely lucky to have been awarded the scholarship as it has given me a year in which to focus almost solely on writing. Working with such inspiring tutors at UEA is an absolute privilege and it is wonderful to be learning alongside my course mates in what is a brilliantly stimulating and supportive environment. It is proving to be a very enriching experience that is shaping and changing the ways in which I think about poetry and also the poems that I write
This annual Scholarship is available for students wishing to study for the MA Creative Writing: Poetry degree course and will contribute to the recipient’s full course fees for one year. Established by Kate Birch, a friend of the University, the Scholarship is named after Ink Sweat & Tears – a creative writing webzine run by Kate and edited by Bloodaxe poet Helen Ivory – which celebrates poetry, prose poetry and short fiction and promotes work that combines word and image. The Ink Sweat & Tears Poetry Writing Scholarship will be awarded by the Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Academic) on the recommendation of a Selection Committee from the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. Find out more about the IS&T Scholarship here.
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