Will You Be My Friend

On 1 December the Emma Press launches the book I edited for them, Best Friends Forever. It’s a book of poems on female friendship. I say I ‘edited for them’ but in truth I put my heart on my sleeve and asked them to publish it for me. It’s a book I had to will into being, not being able to find anything that does what I wanted it to do. From my intro:

“When I was younger, I wanted to be part of the cult of Best Friends. I wanted the necklace,  the endless telephone talk and the secret pact. I wanted to be able to name the girl in that coveted spot. I wanted that certainty both emotionally (my own dear heart) and practically (someone to eat my lunch with).

Then, when I was 14, the riot grrrl movement connected me to other women and girls and gave me a worldwide cohort of sisters. This was a massively emboldening thing for me and the idea of The One BFF became less important, as I began to understand friendships as more elastic, complex and various. While the count-on-one hand friends are steadfast and have become like sisters, there have been others who were very present in my life for just a little time – the right time – and who will always be special to me. Knowing this also makes me wonder about the friends I’ve not yet made, who will become important to me in future years.”

It’s with this in mind, it feels quite auspicious that in a few days time Julia Scheele will launch Double Da Ya – a riot grrrl inspired superzine. I contributed two pieces to it. For one of them I invited some women writers I admire (Katherine Angel, Chrissy Williams, Livia Franchini, Martha Sprackland, Sophie Mackintosh, Rebecca Perry, Francine Elena, Amy May, Kathryn Maris), to the pub to taste kids’ sweets and review them for me. I asked them to come along by email, an email with the subject line ‘will you be my friend’ (inspired by Kathryn Maris’s poem from Best Friends Forever). I’d not met one of the women I invited, a couple of others I’d only met a few times, some I invited are good friends already. We sat in the back of the Princess Louise, making ourselves sick on swizzle sticks and Haribo.

I organised it in the spirit of/it reminded me of when me and my sister Rebecca held a riot grrrl tea party, sometime in 1992 or 1993 probably. We made fairy cakes iced with spider webs and plotted the revolution. One of the girls that came along was in a band called Pussy Cat Trash. I remember seeing her play a song at a dingy club in Sunderland, a song for a friend. I forget what is was called but the essence of the song was a wish that her ‘arms could stretch to be there for you now’. It was a love song, a song of regret felt for not being there for someone, for letting them down, for being too far away. It’s always stayed with me and was in my mind when editing the book – especially the section called ‘I let your hand go’. 

Some of my ‘best’, most enduring friendships have at times made me very sad, or caused pain. It was important for me that Best Friends Forever wasn’t overly sweet, that it reflects real friendships and that is what I want to celebrate. We’re having a launch party on 1 December at the Vauxhall Teahouse Theatre. It’s free! Come along and hear some of the wonderful contributors to the book and raise a glass to friendship.

Meanwhile, I saw a group of my BFFs last weekend in Edinburgh and gave them all copies of the book, which I made in part as a tribute to them and I’m sending copies to my other BFFs.

Love you forever.

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Some new poems & readings &tc

New poems

Really excited to have two new poems in POETRY’s October edition. It’s an all-UK poets issue and features some beautiful work taken from Poetry Review (Liz Berry’s poems being particularly great) and new poetry from lots of people I admire  including Kathryn Maris, Sophie Collins, James Brookes, Sam Riviere, Claire Trévien and Hannah Lowe. It’s such a brilliant magazine and great value, so subscribe!

It’s nice to publish poems that feel different to the work in my book – I have this feeling that I need to ‘move on’ somehow…there are a few more coming up in Poetry Review and Poetry Wales.

New anthologies

I’ve contributed two pieces to this amazing project Double Dare Ya: A Riot Grrrl Inspired Super Zine, edited by the amazing artist Julia Scheele. I was super inspired by riot grrrl when I was a teenager and ended up in tears watching ‘The Punk Singer‘ recently. Huggy Bear and Bikini Kill were the first band I went to see at the Newcastle Riverside. My pieces are inspired by Skinned Teen’s fanzine Drop Babies and Kathy Acker. There is a brilliant crowd-funding deal to be had for the zine and associated artwork here.

I’m also just finalising the introduction to Best Friends Forever, the anthology of poems on female friendship that’s coming out from The Emma Press in December. Contributors to the book include Rebecca Perry, Annie Freud, Karen McCarthy-Woolf, Martha Sprackland, Camellia Stafford and Brenda Shaughnessy. I’ll be getting the proofs for the book any day now, and I’m feeling very excited about seeing it in book form for the first time.

Readings

Next weekend (Saturday 11 October) I’m doing a super short reading as part of the London Lit Crawl, which is being held in Peckham for the first time and then on Sunday 12 October, heading to the Lichfield Festival for an Emma Press reading on love and friendship with Liz Berry, Jacqueline Saphra and Francine Elena. There will be scones and tea! You can book here.

On Thursday 16 October I’m reading a few poems alongside Alex MacDonald, Crispin Best and Joey Connolly at the Archway with Words festival/Video Strolls screening. It’s at The Hideaway 7-9pm and it’s free!

On Saturday 8 November, I’m reading at the Reading Poetry Festival with Ian Duhig and Kate Clanchy, then co-hosting with Emma Wright, a pre-launch preview of Best Friends Forever with Fran Lock, Kathryn Maris, Rebecca Perry and Camellia Stafford.

Poems in Which

Poems in Which 6 will go live very soon. It has brilliant new poems from Joey Connolly, Holly Isemonger, Jon Stone, Becky Varley-Winter, Amy Blakemore and, err, many more. Nia and I are cock-a-hoop that Wayne Holloway-Smith, Alex MacDonald and Rebecca Perry are joining us as co-editors from Issue 7 onwards, so we should be able to get through our submissions somewhat quicker than we can manage at the moment and hopefully publish at least 4 issues a year.

Bitlets

I’m writing a piece on Rosemary Tonks’s collected poems, just out from Bloodaxe. I have been reading it with a kind of terrible excitement and anxiety. I’m pretty enchanted & slightly intimidated by the requirement to get my response down on paper.

Finally, I’ve taken on a trustee role at fabulous The Poetry School. I’m so happy they want to have me.