Tag: poetry

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Back to Basics with Spell‑Checking

I’ve been using the free tier of Grammarly since 2017, but I’d disabled the extension in Firefox.

This was primarily because my old computer didn’t have enough RAM and couldn’t easily handle the extra work. Even once I invested in upgrading the memory, I simply didn’t think to turn it on again.

So for a long time now, I’ve been writing these entries without the aid of a spell-checker, and that’s led to a few errors that weren’t picked up manually.

Last week, I decided to switch it back on, and I was quickly reminded of the other reasons I’d disabled it.

When a suggestion box appeared underneath the text, like correcting suggesiton to suggestion, I found this useful.

But Grammarly also constantly pushed its Pro membership level through these boxes. The software was set up to reveal only a few advanced suggestions per day before blanking them out and telling the user to upgrade.

I found those few advanced suggestions would amount to little more than a find-and-replace with a thesaurus; found might be changed to discovered, or stay to remain. There appeared to be no way to switch these off or even to snooze them for a fixed period

I’ve been writing long enough to know I need a strong spell-checker but a low-level grammar checker that only looks for obvious errors like should of rather than should have.

Grammarly was already beginning to bloat with features even in 2017 and this has only continued to grow. It must be stated, however, that’s far from exclusive to this software, and there are writers who will benefit from that Pro level subscription. I’m simply not one of them.

After closing my account, it was time to take advantage of the spell-checker built into Firefox. By adding a third-party dictionary to ensure all words belonged in British English, I’ve been able to catch the majority of errors without the need for further suggestions.

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Digging into the Edinburgh Spoken-Word Scene

Continuing a recent trend, I’ve been going to more spoken-word events. This hasn’t been a conscious decision, but instead a combination of wanting to see my poetry pals in action and simply being available on the night.

My schedule worked out in such a way that I was able to visit the Athletic Arms in Edinburgh, known locally as The Diggers, for the two-monthly Graveyard Shift event. It’s further afield than I could normally manage.

One of the headline acts, Ross McCleary, brought this to my attention. I’d originally wanted to surprise him, but it was necessary to clarify some details, particularly as the poster showed the date as Thursday 7 May, whereas the Ko-Fi page initially listed Tuesday 12 May.

So with my train booked and a rough idea of where I was going, I arrived just in time for 7pm. Cards on the table, I would typically steer clear of any pub so closely associated with a football team; in this case, Hearts of Midlothian FC.

However, I found the place nothing less than welcoming to a variety of drinkers, almost none of whom were in team colours. I was particularly impressed by the snug at the back, sectioned off by a thick door from the noise of the main bar. It even contained a makeshift cloakroom.

These are not luxuries I’ve always experienced when running my own events, not by a long chalk.

Ross was the last headliner of the night, with Annie Brechin presenting a wonderful spoken-word set in the first half. I was able to speak to both of them throughout the evening. In between, we heard Grant B Robertson playing comedy songs on guitar. It’s a purely personal view, but what a welcome break from the navel-gazing I’ve come to expect from solo musicians.

The Graveyard Shift also opens its stage to a handful of open-mic performers, who are allotted up to four minutes apiece. Not every one of them was up my street, but grassroots poetry thrives on that mix of voices from the beginners to the seasoned, from the angry to the jaded, and all in between.

The next event in July is on a Tuesday evening when I’ll be running my own group, so I know I won’t make that. If the stars align again, however, I’d be delighted to go back and perhaps grab one of those open-mic slots.

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Join the ALCS Today

Year after year, there’s one topic I revisit on this blog, and that’s encouraging readers to join the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS).

For nearly 50 years, the organisation has been collecting royalties on behalf of authors. Unlike primary royalties, such as book sales, these are from secondary uses of creators’ works, including: photocopies, cable retransmission, digital reproduction and educational recording. Members receive a bank payment in March and/or September every year, depending on the types of work registered and how often the works have been requested.

If your work appears in at least one publication with an ISBN, you’re almost certainly eligible to join. You’ll need that ISBN, plus a few other details about the work.

Be aware of the one-off membership fee of £36, which is deducted from your first payment rather than paid upfront. There is also a commission of 10% taken from each annual payment, which allows the ALCS to continue to fund its work.

This year, writers received a total of £47.5 million. This is not shared equally, but is based upon the number and type of works registered. It almost certainly won’t be enough to live on as a passive income, except perhaps if you’re a prolific author.

Rather, it’s an acknowledgement of the principle that authors should be paid when a transformative or derivative work is made using someone else’s source material.

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This Year’s Visit to StAnza

About a month ago, I mentioned I was gearing up to visit the StAnza poetry festival in St Andrews. That took place from Friday to Sunday.

I’d booked two events in advance. The first was a virtual writing hour with Fife Writes during Friday lunchtime, so I was able to take part remotely. The other was a poetry walk along the coast on Saturday morning where we stopped every few minutes to hear a related verse.

I’d left a lot of slack time while the rest of the weekend came together. For example, one of the volunteers wanted to speak with me about a new spoken-word event she was setting up, but our schedules didn’t match up, even for a quick conversation.

However, I was able to catch up with a pal who lives in the town. We generally only see each other around once a year. He’d booked a Kate Ireland show for Saturday afternoon, so I followed suit. At the last minute, that was cancelled and replaced with an event by Dean Tsang, who chose the order of his poems using a spinning wheel. I enjoyed that a lot, probably more than I would have enjoyed the expected show.

I go back year after year because it’s a small festival with an ever-present sense of poets coming together to read and write poetry. I can only identify one area of criticism, around pricing, and I’ve said as much in my feedback form.

I understand the aim of their ‘pay what you can’ model to make it accessible to everyone, which comprises a range of up to four price points that could be £5, £10, £15 and £20. I find this to be too much choice. I’d prefer to see just one or two options: (1) the break‑even cost with a surplus, and/or (2) a concession rate. Additionally, that would give me a clearer sense of what the event actually costs to run.

The feedback forms normally include a section where you can specify how much you spent on travel, accommodation, food and drink. I’d kept a careful tally, but that section was missing this year.

For the first time since before the pandemic, I stayed overnight in St Andrews, partly so I could go to shows later at night. I ultimately didn’t go to other events because the times were awkward, but I did nosey around Toppings bookshop before heading to bed at a reasonable time.

There was one other reason I stayed overnight. In August, I’m taking part in a charity Kiltwalk, and the aim is to walk from St Andrews to Dundee via Tentsmuir forest. While I do walk long distances regularly, this is an especially long route, so I need to go on some training walks.

That was the second one I’ve done so for. Every time, I’m learning the best way to prepare and – importantly – what not to do.

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The Unpredictablity of Live Performance

In 2011, the joint premiere of the play White Rabbit, Red Rabbit was held at the Edinburgh Fringe and at the SummerWorks Festival in Toronto. Most playwrights would be left with the difficult decision of which one to attend, but for Nassim Soleimanpour, the decision was made for him.

At the time, he wasn’t allowed to leave Iran, having refused to take part in compulsory military service there. Performing a play usually requires a lot of discussion between the playwright, the director, the actors and the crew, so how was this one staged with one crucial element removed?

In short, the script travelled the world without him, and didn’t require a director nor a set. In front of an audience, the actor takes the script from the envelope and performs a cold reading. Of course, you have only one opportunity to hold a cold reading, so the trade-off with this method is that a different actor is required for every performance, with a 2024 revival attracting some big names.

Soleimanpour was finally granted a passport in 2013, but the format remains untouched.

While I haven’t yet had the opportunity to see White Rabbit, Red Rabbit, I was reminded of the unpredictable energy of live performance after seeing a recent reading of a different kind. This was done by my pal Luca Cockayne at Generator Projects in Dundee. He’s undergoing medical transition, which is baked into some of his work.

After his first poem, the unexpected surprise was to take his regular injection of testosterone live on stage. Furthermore, the vial had been hidden in plain sight under his artwork on the wall, so it was case of walking over to grab it. During the injection, a Bluetooth speaker played a selection of pre-recorded poetry with his voice electronically modulated into different registers.

The audience were, of course, warned in advance. However, nobody left; in fact, nobody even averted their eyes. What can I say? We were an arty audience who thrived on this stuff, however unanticipated.

I’m now rather jaded when it comes to live readings, so it really needs to be something special to stand out, but that performance was definitely in my top unexpected moments. To find an equivalent, I probably have to go back to 2014, when I was invited to perform on a bill at Dundee University Student Association. I wrote a little about that performance at the time, and it produced two highlights.

One former friend performed a piece as if he were a manager showing a new recruit around an office building. There were two microphones on the stage and after each paragraph, he wandered over to the other one. I thought this was a terrific idea to emphasise the wandering nature of the piece. I told him as much later on, although he admitted that was improvised upon seeing two microphones were available.

Another performer walked onto the stage with a rucksack. After his introduction, he ran around the room giving out chocolate bars from the bag. He dubbed my poetry as ‘awesome’, which I held in high regard as I was new to writing verse.

I also have one more lasting impression from that night. The purple mood lighting was so prevalent that it inspired a further poem the following month, although I didn’t have a chance to perform it on that stage under that lighting.

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Three Ways to Proofread in a Hurry

Other than the actual writing, there is another basic skill required from a writer, and that’s to look over back over the words at a later stage to ensure they have the intended meaning.

It can be tempting to edit immediately. With the exception of the most obvious errors, however, I advise against this. Proofreading and subsequent editing is best done cold, as if seeing the text for the first time. It’s also a good idea to keep Track Changes turned on during this time.

But what if you have a piece you need to finish? Below are three tips that have helped me.

1: Leaving enough time

My guideline is to leave the text aside for a minimum of one minute per word, or for 24 hours, whichever is longer. So a villanelle might be left 24 hours on account of its brevity, whereas a 4000-word story might be picked up again in around three days’ time.

I would not be offended if anyone picked up this formula and publicised it as ‘Cameron’s Rule’, or suchlike.

2: Changing the typeface

After reading and reading the same text over again, the words sometimes merge together. One way to counteract this is by changing the text to a completely different typeface and/or the colour of the text. Have a rake through the ones available on your machine and find a legible one in a different style.

If you prefer to make your first draft by hand, you’re already at an advantage when you transfer it to a computer. The same text can look different on a screen. I find I can write what seems like a long paragraph by hand but it seems shorter when viewed in type.

3. Ask someone else to read over it

This method comes with some risk, especially if you’re in a hurry. What if the other person fails to reply? What if it requires a detailed rewrite?

The trade-off is that it’s a often reliable gauge of how readers might view the piece. I’ve sometimes heard back from folks that some content needs to be explained more, or occasionally that they grasped the concept and the words can be cut back.

However, you choose to do it, it’s worth investing the time. You don’t want to find an error once you’ve had 1,000 copies printed.

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Warming Up for the StAnza Festival

As we step into February, the StAnza poetry festival in St Andrews is just six weeks away. This year, it runs for the shortest period I’ve ever known: from Friday 13 to Sunday 15 March. It’s typically four or five days long, with 2022 extending to seven.

Before the pandemic, I would make a weekend of the festival, booking accommodation and attending a wide range of events. The Byre Theatre remains the main hub of activity, but many events are hosted in other venues around the area.

The last time I stayed over was in 2020. Since then, I’ve become more selective, partly due to other weekend commitments and partly because it’s challenging to absorb a lot of intense poetry in one go. Staying over also allowed me to see the poetry slam, which finished after the last bus home, although it’s now held earlier in the day.

One of my other favourite traditions was to start Saturday morning with a panel event that included either a cake or a pie, plus a hot drink. That doesn’t feature this year, so I’ve instead booked a bracing coastal poetry walk, followed by a practical Writing Hour with Fife Writes. The festival atmosphere always nudges me to write a poem or two anyway, so it’s a good start.

These are just the events I have planned so far. There’ll no doubt be others that catch my attention once I’m actually there, and I’ll be sure to tell you all about it.

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Stage Presence and Off-Stage Presence

The other week, I was listening to the BBC radio programme Desert Island Discs from 2018., where Lauren Laverne was interviewing the comedian Alan Carr.

I’ll say upfront that I’m ambivalent about his work. I enjoy watching it if I happen to catch him on TV, but it’s unlikely I would deliberately seek out gig tickets.

Although he’s known for stand-up comedy, he made a remark early in the programme about how he doesn’t watch other comics because he doesn’t enjoy it. He went on to say that if he’s part of a bill, he’ll only show up for his section and then leave. You can listen to the relevant section on BBC Sounds from the 10m 30s mark.

When I hear about a comic with the stature of Alan Carr saying he doesn’t watch his peers, it sounds like Stephen King saying he doesn’t read novels. Frankly, it comes across as dismissive towards the other acts, even if this doesn’t seem to have hurt his career.

For as long as I’ve done spoken-word events, there’s been an expectation that if you’re invited to perform as part of a bill, you arrive before the start and watch the other performers until the end. It feels like a collective experience and, in some cases, helps to gauge the mood of the room. In more elaborate productions, showing up early also gives the crew time to run a technical rehearsal.

I find I always learn something from the other acts: a turn of phrase, a particular delivery, a way of holding the audience, or – every so often – how not to do these things.

In one positive example, I’m reminded of a Josie Giles gig in Birmingham shortly before the pandemic. I knew a little about her work, and next to nothing about Joelle Taylor who was on the same bill. Having watched a lot of poetry, I thought I’d seen it all before. Yet both their performances were so well done that I walked out of that building saying, ‘I didn’t know you could do that with words.’

There are negative examples too, like the amateur actor who thought he would try stand-up comedy. I’ve no idea how he stayed in his theatre group without being able to read a room, but some of his gags were incredibly out of date and offensive, and nearly every one fell flat.

So I’m curious about other people’s experiences. Do you stay for the whole show when you’re performing, or do you dip in and out? Is this just an expectation for some types of gigs but not others? Am I, in fact, in the minority?

That was where the entry was meant to end, and I clicked Save yesternight with a view to redrafting this entry today. I then received a message from a couple of local writers. They’re looking to bring a poetry evening to Dundee in April, and we’ll need to discuss the type of material they want.

Whoever is on the bill with me, I’ll definitely be listening to their performances.

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A Tale of Two Topics

When I update this blog, I aim to stick with one topic throughout. But I hope you’ll indulge me just this once as I follow up last week’s entry about copyright and the public domain, and then follow up with the planned topic.

Copyright caveats

A few days after I posted my entry, the YouTube producer Chris Spargo released a relevant video, exploring a section of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 that I didn’t know about.

In 1929, J M Barrie granted the rights of his play Peter Pan to Great Ormond Street Hospital so they would benefit financially from its every performance. Although the play fell into the public domain in 1987, this arrangement was specifically written into legislation to make sure it continued in perpetuity – or at least until it’s repealed.

For the avoidance of doubt, the hospital has no creative control over the use of the play and can’t prevent performances from going ahead. It can only collect fees from any performance that is staged.

Disconnection doldrums

It was fortunate you were able to see last week’s entry. Where possible, I like to have at least a draft lined up 24 hours in advance. I can then tinker with the text just before publication at 7:30pm on a Tuesday, which coincides with a weekly writing group.

The staff are very accommodating in the pub where we meet. Probably the only criticism is something outside their control. Because the place was a cinema until 1998, it still has thick soundproof walls that also interfere with Wi-Fi and mobile phone reception.

Often we manage a weak but stable connection with a combination of our own hotspots and the pub Wi-Fi. But on Tuesday of last week, we were out of luck, no matter what we tried. So we stopped the in-person session and moved to the house of the other group leader. Once online, we were able to keep the members of our Discord server informed about what had happened.

One of the strengths of the weekly two-hour meeting is having that ringfenced time either to write or to carry out administration. For example, I picked up an overdue task about transferring my Web domain and hosting to a new plan, as the one I used was being phased out.

This then led me down a path of ‘Do I really need [insert feature]?’ and ‘What if I do away with that email address?’ It took a few days, but I’m pleased to report that the transfer was smooth, so this site stayed online.

In fact, the other group leader and I occasionally schedule admin days where we can make desicions about the direction of the group and/or solve ongoing problems. These are always deliberately held on a non-meeting day and in a different location.

This week, I’ve taken extra time to prepare. I drafted this entry on Sunday night, and made amendments yesterday, so it’ll almost certainly be in the can and ready to go at the appointed time.

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The Cultural Value of the Public Domain

When I heard about the recent adaptation of Frankenstein by Guillermo del Toro, I absolutely had to see it at some point.

The novel has been a talking point among my poetry circle, the Wyverns, since we released a released a pamphlet with the theme of Frankenstein in 2018. There is a local connection in that Mary Shelley was living in Dundee when she started writing it.

For literature in the UK and EU, a work remains in copyright for 70 years after the death of the author. Even if that law had been around in 1851, Frankenstein is still squarely into the public domain, so any director is allowed complete artistic freedom. The consensus seems to be that this version is faithful to the spirit of the novel, but not the details.

If Mary Shelley somehow arrived in our time and was able to watch this, I think she would be impressed.

But copyright law varies by juristiction and by type of work. In 1998, the US passed the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. This extended the copyright of works authored by corporations, meaning they wouldn’t become public domain until 95 years after the date of their creation.

The legislation was named after the late Sonny Bono, who believed that copyright should be in perpetuity. However, the true beneficiary is widely thought to be The Walt Disney Company. Only within the last two years has its first creation – Mickey Mouse – fallen into the public domain, and we can expect to see more following suit over the coming decades.

In the literary world, novels from the middle of the 20th century novels are beginning to fall out of copyright. A prime example is Nineteen Eighty-Four because George Orwell died in 1950, just two years after its publication.

Wikipedia maintains pages about works that will become public domain in 2026, and if you fancy reading some of these, they might be available on the Gutenberg Project website.