HappenStance and StAnza
A year or two on from when I last wrote here about their poetry publications, Fife-based HappenStance Press seems to be thriving, with several new pamphlets coming out each year as well as Sphinx magazine, which is dedicated to chapbook and pamphlet publishing – articles, reviews, interviews and advice. Writers recently published by them include Michael Munro and Margaret Christie. I was particularly pleased to see work by Gregory Leadbetter, a poet whose work I have noted in the past, collected in The Body in the Well (£3 including UK P&P).
Leadbetter is a former lawyer who has given himself over to more literary pursuits (TV scripting and production / a current PhD on Coleridge) and this is a fairly substantial pamphlet – containing not much less than some of the commercial presses package as a full book. As someone who skims, scans and scrutinizes bing loads of poetry every year in my various guises of teacher, poet reviewer and editor, I sometimes tire of poetry which stays within familiar territories, but while Leadbetter writes mainly within the traditions of the personal and nature lyric, he writes so freshly, so well, I greatly enjoyed this first book.
Happenstance boss Helena Nelson says of him, "He gets things right slowly and comes at things from an unusual (but not forced) angle. He isn't too prolific, doesn't squander his talent but definitely has it," and praises him for having given up a lucrative career for more artistic concerns. The title poems gives a good flavour of his work:
The Body in the Well
Even here, where the aquifers are spoken of
with a reverence strangers save for cathedrals,
it's rare to find a house like this, three stories
of gleaming limestone raised like a lantern
out of the rock, lit like a match when struck
by the stone of the clear moon, a pale flame.
The locals say the house was a dream of his,
climbing like a pyramid month on month:
building it was a way to forget. Make
this dream your own, the auction-catalogue
tells the buying public. The property
includes a well follows in a quieter font.
He would listen at the mouth in the floor
of the cellar, patient for the voice of the dark
in the sound of the stalagmites rising.
When he fell into its echoing heart
the waters gathered him with their song
and here, he remembered everything.
HappenStance has eight poets lined up for 2008, six of them are first publications, plus well known American poet Mark Halliday and Paula Jennings, previously published by Scottish Cultural Press. Helena Nelson adds, "I'm getting some excellent submissions these days which is great - but most of them are not from Scottish writers. Presumably because Scotland has such a small population compared to England. Sphinx is doing well too - the subscriber base is building quite steadily and it's one of the few poetry-related publications that doesn't get subscribers who think they might get published in it! Also the only one I know with funny cartoons in it."
Helena has also been involved for some years with StAnza, Scotland's major poetry festival, which takes place in my home town St Andrews each Spring. StAnza has just launched a new website ( http://www.stanzapoetry.org ) and its programme for 2008 looks very good indeed with a main theme of Poetry & Conflict (guests include the fine US poet Brian Turner whose experiences as a soldier in the Balkans and Iraq are written about in the well-received Here, Bullet) and a larger than normal percentage of poets from non-English speaking countries (including writers from Norway, The Netherlands, Algeria and Germany).
Scottish poets taking part include John Burnside, Liz Lochhead, Kenneth White, AB Jackson and Tom Leonard, who will be reading with London poet Annie Freud - whose first book appeared last year - one of the most engaging readers of poetry I have ever seen. The festival writer in residence is the popular poet Adrian Mitchell, who will be busy at various events. The unmissable reading will be the pairing of Americans Tess Gallagher and August Kleinzahler, the latter being the nearest thing the poetry world has to a king of cool.