{"id":207,"date":"2014-05-28T10:17:18","date_gmt":"2014-05-28T10:17:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/?p=207"},"modified":"2014-05-28T10:20:11","modified_gmt":"2014-05-28T10:20:11","slug":"summer-reading-series-tony-frazer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/summer-reading-series-tony-frazer\/","title":{"rendered":"Summer Reading Series: Tony Frazer"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Debney<\/a>

Patricia Debney; Tony Frazer<\/p><\/div>\n

Back to Keynes SCR for two events last week, and a familiar face on both evenings. On Tuesday, Nancy Gaffield launched her stunning new collection of poetry Continental Drift<\/em>, published by Shearsman Books and sold, hot from the press, by the publisher. On Wednesday, the man who is Shearsman was in the chair himself, the first of the Summer Reading Series industry professionals.<\/p>\n

Tony Frazer has spent 30 years in the poetry publishing business, and runs one of the UK\u2019s longest surviving small poetry presses. After an initial foray into magazine publishing, and the inevitable folding of that early venture, Frazer found that the submissions still kept coming. \u2018It seemed wrong to send these things back\u2019, so while the steam was up he created a modest publication, printing \u2018some 100 copies\u2019 which were \u2018passed from hand to hand\u2019. A cult following of sorts was established \u2013 \u2018a virtuous circle of readers\u2019 – and Frazer sensed there was a market. Publishing poetry was never going to make money, of course (\u2018I had a job for that\u2019), but it was a hobby that took on increasing significance, and eventually began to pay for itself.<\/p>\n

Working abroad seemed to help. \u2018I was based in Hong Kong,\u2019 Frazer said, \u2018and people would get requests from me and think \u2013 who is this guy over there? \u2013 and then they would send me poems.\u2019 Rather than being away from the centre of literary activity, Frazer was documenting it, creating it. \u2018I asked people for poems and I got them: Roy Fisher, Robert Bly \u2013 even Doris Lessing sent me something.\u2019<\/p>\n

Publications came and went. Frazer collaborated with friends for a while, but discovered that co-editing wasn\u2019t for him. Rather than producing a magazine that published \u2019everybody\u2019s second choice\u2019, Frazer decided to go alone, setting up Shearsman in the early 90s, where he could publish what he wanted and practice his preferred \u2018benign despotism\u2019. Like most small press offerings of the time, Shearsman Magazine ran as a quarterly pamphlet for several years before the hike in postage costs caused Frazer to rethink. \u2018So many presses gave up\u2019, but doing the sums, Frazer realised that Shearsman could continue to produce a biannual book at a lower cost. Chapbooks and occasional collections followed, \u2018because people kept sending in good manuscripts\u2019, but Frazer was beginning to run out of money. Then digital publishing changed the face of small publishing. \u2018Suddenly there was no need to produce copies which were destined to remain in boxes in the garage.\u2019 No master copy, no typesetting, no minimum print run \u2013 print on demand was a financial salvation. \u2018Finally Shearsman started making money. It had never happened before!\u2019<\/p>\n

Patricia Debney, interviewing Frazer, asked why he kept going. \u2018It\u2019s difficult to get off the carousel once you are on it\u2019, he said. \u2018I\u2019ll keep going for another eight years or so.\u2019 And then? \u2018A long established press is interested in \u2018buying\u2019 Shearsman.\u2019<\/p>\n

For now, would-be contributors to the Shearsman stable have only one person to please. So what does Frazer look for? \u2018It\u2019s hard to say\u2019, he claimed – although it is clear that anyone submitting work should study the guidelines on his website<\/a>, and stick to the two annual \u2018reading windows\u2019 when sending in writing. What about personal taste? Shearsman is known to have experimental leanings, but Frazer considers it \u2018a broad church\u2019. It\u2019s about the eye, and the ear. \u2018Some stuff comes in that defies all strictures and if it still works, it\u2019s in.\u2019<\/p>\n

If those readers brave enough to start the evening were listening, publication surely beckons. Moyra Tourlamain is already set to publish her collection The Book of Hours of Kitty Power with Verisimilitude later this summer (see Kent Review and previous blog for a sneak preview), and she enjoyed a stint of recognition as the Canterbury Poet of the Year in 2010. Less familiar with the travails of public reading, Jan Mowbray delivered a confident rendition from her series of poems produced this year, including some metronomic lines with ticking syllables \u2018like a skein of birds\u2019 (and not a single nervous quiver). Ben Porter read from his series \u2018Greyhound Gallop\u2019: pacy, racing lines that landed with the quick grace of forepaws on dirt track. Perhaps bravest of all was Claudia Orduz-Landinez, who had read her poems in Spanish before, but never in English. After embracing the teaching of Simon Smith and the realisation that \u2018all writing is nonsense\u2019, putting two languages together posed no problem. The resulting poems not only straddled cultures but seemed to envelope them in each other, a double helix of meanings that made absolute sense, and yet none at all.<\/p>\n

A high bar has been set for the term.<\/p>\n

More words from the wise over the next few weeks: literary agents, publishers and dauntless postgrad readers every Wednesday at 6pm in Keynes SCR. Keep on coming.<\/p>\n

Sonia<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back to Keynes SCR for two events last week, and a familiar face on both evenings. On Tuesday, Nancy Gaffield launched her stunning new collection of poetry Continental Drift, published by Shearsman Books and sold, hot from the press, by the publisher. On Wednesday, the man who is Shearsman was in the chair himself, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38085,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[21640,49732,72957,1225,49743,48315,49728,49725,49742,49163,49769,46589,49730,49360,49727,74,49726],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38085"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":212,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207\/revisions\/212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}