My Indefinite Hiatus From Poetry

I’m not announcing my retirement. Probably. I don’t know. This post isn’t for you. It’s for me to clear my thoughts going into the new year.

I’ve spent five years writing, more or less nonstop. This was alongside running a successful online journal, or successful for what it was at least, and starting Hem Press. I am proud of these.

I’ve not had a need to talk about this often, but I left school at 16 with virtually no qualifications. I couldn’t tell the time until I was 15. My home life was, let’s say, shaky. I ran away in my early 20s and was technically homeless for a stint (that is, sleeping on the sofa of a guy I barely knew). I spent my late teens to my early thirties trying very hard not to kill myself, which is no longer a struggle. I’ve plenty to be proud of.

But when you write nonstop for five years, you inevitably end up with some shit manuscripts. These, mercifully, were not accepted for publication. The fact remains tho: I could probably do with not writing for a time.

Then there are changes in the poetry world the last few years, especially post-2021. I’ve written about these before.

The blessings and the curses of poetry are indistinguishable. The bad news is the wider culture gives zero fucks about poetry, and the poetry world doesn’t need you and will get on perfectly without you. The good news is, these are the very things that give you creative freedom. As the uncredited adage in Creative Writing circles goes, Write as if nobody’s reading, because nobody’s reading. If I’m being honest with myself, this and all prior points could be managed. I could just… Not write for a bit and return in a few months.

My real struggle is the sheer amount of bullshit I’ve had to put up with as a poet and publisher.

When I started Hem Press I promised myself its success would be due to my authors and their books, not the amount of dead bodies left behind us. This is in reaction to what poetry was like online 2020 - 2021. Not a day went by without someone having a problem with something based on the abstraction of a reading of a social media exchange. And you know why users jumped on those. You know that I know, and I know you know that I know. It wasn’t because of ethics or community. It’s because they enjoyed it, because it momentarily placated unrelated anxieties or childhood traumas.

Reread this until it makes sense: none of our traumas, no matter how bad, are good reasons to attack others.

Please don’t think this is aimed at a single press, journal or writer. It’s aimed at most of them. I wonder if Richard is referring to _________? Yeah, probably. This is a problem with the ground our belief is predicated on, which engulf all of us instead of one set of individuals. This is the true ramifications of community: to be implicated in actions you’re a bystander to. If your impulse is to forward this post having captioned it with, omg wtf, I recommend you sit quietly, alone, with your phone off and turn your gaze on yourself.

I understand why folk were so ready to publicly shame: it’s easy. Any idiot can do it. But it is not how I want to live my life. I deserve better than to do that to others; my authors deserve a publisher who doesn’t default to tantrums.

Having said that, I can count on one hand the presses and journals who I haven’t heard dirt about and still have fingers left. And you know what? I’M NOT EVEN INCLUDED IN THAT LIST!!! If every subject of goss disappeared overnight, there would be no UK poetry. This alone should give us pause.

My point still holds: the sheer amount of bullshit I’ve had to put up with as a poet and publisher...

I’ve had two poets (three years apart - one of whom you’d know, the other I had financially supported and platformed) send me inappropriate emails about other poets.

I had a contractual agreement with one author who went silent after claiming she had eye problems. This was before she posted her social outings as Instagram stories. I spent the whole of December 2021 formatting her visually labyrinthine chapbook. My biggest achievement as a typesetter.

I had a verbal agreement to publish another poet, a friendship of four or so years I valued, before I was ghosted and manuscripts started appearing with bigger presses. (This is fine, incidentally, but tell the editor you were working with.)

I’ve been messed around by book distributors. I’ve met poets, among those who believe all the correct things online, act like pricks in person.

These are just some my direct experiences, alongside witnessing how a lot of you treat others.

Taken individually, these challenges are manageable. When they build over time, they weigh on the heart. This is why I need an indefinite hiatus from writing poetry. Hem Press and Substack and infrequent podcast activities will continue. I will still be involved in community, but it will actually be community.

If you ask me what my favourite books are, Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino (translated by William Weaver) is my absolute desert island pick with all other books ranked in no particular order. Following the rise of the technocratic right and the collapse of the left into state-sanctioned centrist mush, this passage by Calvino/Weaver is the nearest thing I have to a political belief:

The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.

A critic might say, Oh, what. You’re “not inferno” Richard? I may well be inferno, but I’m confident that posting on social media about global horrors, assuming you’re helping without the slightest reflection that the horrors continue regardless is, literally, to be part of the inferno.

So, what… This critic would respond, We should just feel helpless? I don’t know. Yes? If our current course isn’t making a difference, maybe it would do us some good to feel helpless. Maybe it would allow us to think clearly, to move forward in a meaningful way.

But that is a digression. Not by much - it does seem the poetry world thinks it can treat anyone however it wants providing there’s a moral justification for it. But it’s a digression nonetheless.

If not inferno is the opposite of what I’ve written about here, then I need to be present with good people in quiet, sincere, healing community. This is not something that can be reduced to a social media post. I am abundantly grateful for Glasgow, which has a passionate, grassroots, DIY arts scene. Likewise, my authors at Hem Press are talented, creative, good people. Referring to both Glasgow and Hem, I want to use my time and resources to make them endure, give them space. When I do, it feels like the stars are brighter.

Why the fuck not? UFOs are a category of real... NATO is unofficially at nuclear war with Russia… A rightwing technocrat billionaire is, for all intents and purposes, the US president… It’s not unlikely he’ll run the UK in the future… There might as well be a causal link between how bright the stars are and true community. Maybe, if the stars do dim and brighten according to how we act, we could radically rethink what politics even is.

I know what the bad faith readings of this post could be: Richard is hiding something, or, He’s referring to such and such, or, This is so hypocritical!!! Just, be quiet. Be kind to animals. Pick up litter when you see it in your local park.

At very very least, try to act with grace and integrity. Even if you don’t succeed. Just try.