Behind the scenes of festivals and publications with Natalie Jayne Clark
And your invite to "Writing Hidden Histories"
Dear beloved subscriber of A Poet’s Work,
I hope this newsletter finds you snug, reflective and well insulated. In this issue I have two delights for you:
More details about "Writing Hidden Histories”, a panel event exploring writing that takes inspiration from personal and family histories that I’m putting on at the Barbican on Fri 24th Jan 2025. I would love to see any subscribers there!
Our third subscriber interview, this time with Natalie Jayne Clark about the the work that goes on behind the scenes of literary festivals and publications and why you might want to consider getting involved.
Welcome to this last issue before the end of the year - I’ll be taking a short pause and restarting in January. I hope you all have brilliant and restful wintry weeks and I’ll see you in your inboxes again in the new year.
Best poetry wishes,
Rachel x
Join us at 6:30pm - 8pm, Friday 24th Jan 2025 at the Barbican, Silk Street, London, EC2Y 8DS
There’ll be:
Live readings from award-winning writers in poetry and prose sharing their takes on their personal and families' intricate stories. Our fantastic panellists are Charlotte Shevchenko Knight and Alison Light, plus me, and chaired by the wonderful Bidisha.
A unique conversation on the rewards and challenges of working with this material
Ideas and insights on how to take inspiration from family history, if this is something you're curious about for yourself and your writing
A free drink afterwards and a chance to chat to the panellists and buy books.
This event is part of my Developing Your Creative Practice grant exploring writing from family history and I’m so looking forward to sharing the discussion with you. I think I’ll learn a lot, and I hope you will as well if you come along. If you’re curious, like me, about how to do this well and draw inspiration from personal histories, I think you’ll really get a lot from it.
Photo credit: Miss Lydia
Welcome Natalie, our third subscriber interview! Natalie Jayne Clark (she/they) is a neurodivergent writer and freelancer based in Perth, Scotland. She's inspired by the brooding, ever-changing treeline of Kinnoull Hill seen from her window as she writes. Their work has been published in anthologies from Flapjack Press, thi wurd, Open Book, and Speculative Books. Natalie was selected for the 2021 cohort of BBC Words First and made it to the Loud Poet's Grand Slam Final at Edinburgh International Book Festival in 2023. They were the featured poet at Push the Boat Out's open mic and featured at Loud Poet's October 2024 showcase. Their debut novel, a sapphic crime book called 'The Malt Whisky Murders', is out 1st May 2025 with Polygon, Birlinn. I sat down with Natalie to talk about her work behind the scenes of festivals and publications, and why she’d highly recommend getting involved.
Hello Natalie! So, our first question to help both me and our readers get to know you - how did you get into writing poetry?
I got into poetry through a supportive writing group. I went to a Sonnet Youth poetry and music event just before the pandemic started. Then when Covid hit one of the producers, Kevin P. Gilday, shared on Twitter that he was going to run a few poetry workshops online while we were locked down. I thought it’d be for a month or so but me and this group of people met every week online for two years!
I was really nervous in that first workshop. I had been working as an English teacher and it’s a job that can weigh you down. You’re often teaching the same poems over and over and while some young people love English, the ones who hate it really hate it. You also have to be professional and sensible all the time. It’s like a facade. I’d lost a bit of my zinginess.
In the first workshop, I thought what I’d written was terrible. In the second week, I did share a poem I wrote, and the group said my style was kind of weird and energetic. And I loved that. Over time, Kevin taught us how to perform our poetry as well. I’m now at the point where I could perform the back of a cereal packet and I share my work mostly through performance.
I live in Perth in Scotland and I have some issues with energy management so I really valued so much going online. I did lots of performing online and went to so many workshops during 2020 - 2022. I’ve now been slowly building up my practice again, spending more time on it, getting more work published and doing more performances and slams, and making writing part of my daily-ish practice, maybe my every-other-day practice.
And how did you get into the world of producing poetry and working behind the scenes in poetry festivals and publishing?
While I was still working as an English teacher, I went part time to do a publishing masters because I could feel myself becoming cynical and jaded. While I was on my masters, Paisley Book Festival held their first ever book festival and the university shared an opportunity to volunteer with them with all the students. I was the only one who took it up. It was great fun, I loved it!
Then I looked for other festivals I could volunteer at. For the Stanza Poetry Festival, I volunteered one day a week over six months as a festival assistant. This gave me a great behind-the-scenes view of everything that goes into making a poetry festival happen. You need great ideas and good partnerships but you also need to comply with the law, have the funds to do it, meet the needs of your funders through evaluation, go through appropriate governance and timetable everything well. I have a very creative side but I also have a very practical side and this organisational aspect of the work really appealed to me. Off the back of my volunteering, I got a job as the Assistant Producer at Stanza Poetry Festival.
I also write articles, interviews and reviews for SNACKmagazine. They’re a Scottish arts and culture magazine. I got to interview Self Esteem which I will always mention! And I sometimes help out with the admin side of the magazine too.
What have you learned from working behind the scenes?
I’ve learned the importance of behaving kindly and professionally as a writer to the people you’re submitting your work or ideas to. Some writers and artists are wonderful to work with. If you need information from them, they’ll respond straight away. Others need chasing three times or they’re really late with responses or they don’t give you the right information. This really matters to publishers and organisers.
Some people are really pushy and demanding about their submissions. That’s hard to deal with, especially because usually I’m not the one making acceptance decisions, I’m just the admin person passing on the decision! I’ve had some real vitriol back from people.
Working behind the scenes has also really helped me appreciate that sometimes a rejection truly isn’t about you or your work. There might be hundreds of submissions and yours might just not be what we’re trying to say here with this specific event or publication.
I’ve also learned it really is so important to follow the guidance and carefully read what they want you to submit. If a publication has asked you to put three poems into one document and you submit three separate documents, you’ve created extra work for someone. It’s made me a better submitter, for sure, to work on the other side.
I actually think it’s really useful for any artist to get involved in events and publications. It helps you understand how your art is displayed to others and navigate the submission process better and the do’s and don’ts in your industry. It’s also a great way to support other writers and artists.
When you volunteer or work for festivals and events, you learn loads about how events are put on and you also get to meet lots of interesting people, both artists and producers.
How has working in events and publications influenced your own writing?
It’s elevated my writing. I now know firsthand just how many wonderful poets there are out there, and how few opportunities. It pushes me to really try to be a blazing light with my work, so that I cannot be passed over, so that I can't be missed.
It’s also made me quicker and more succinct. It pushes me to think - can I delete some of these lines? What is this really about and how do I edit to focus on that?
I’ve been watching the Netflix documentary Pop Star Academy recently. It’s about forming a K-pop group. Something the chief producer said on the programme really stuck with me. He said he makes all his decisions about who should be in the K-pop group based solely on watching videos of them perform. He only meets the trainees in-person after the final line up is decided. He does that because most people who interact with a K-pop group see them only over a screen, watching their music videos on Youtube or their TikToks. So the producer feels he needs to know whether they will stand out in the way most people will see them. And that really reminds me of what you’re describing. You’ve realised that editors are reviewing poems lightning fast in a mass inbox so you want your work to stand out in that context.
Yeah. Knowing that there’s so many wonderful people out there, and these editors and programmers are seeing a huge quantity of amazing people, has made me feel I need to approach poetry like a job interview where first impressions matter most. I think about firstly whether I’ve followed everything they’ve asked for in the submission and secondly whether my work is going to stand out.
You mentioned you got your current job by volunteering first. Do you have any suggestions for how people can get involved in publications or festivals as volunteers?
Yes! For festivals, find out what’s near you geographically and have a look on their website. They’ll always be looking for volunteers. Most festivals just want someone keen and available. They might ask you a couple of questions about why you want to do the role and why you think you’d be a good fit, then they might follow up with an informal Zoom call to have a chat. It’s not really an interview process, it’s mainly to get a sense of who you are. And so long as you can be available for a couple of shifts, that’ll be it!
Publications are a little different but many will want online volunteers to act as submission readers or editors. Again, have a look at publication websites. It might still be good to look at what is local to you e.g. if you’re based in Scotland like me, you might want to reach out to a Scottish publication.
Being a submission reader means you read through a selection of their submissions and give your feedback. Other people read them too - each poem/piece will likely be looked at by two or more people so it’s not just you making the decision. Being a submission reader is brilliant because you’re exposed to maybe 50 submissions. This gives you an opportunity to benchmark yourself and think, “What stands out and what doesn’t? Where am I sitting in these submissions? Where would I put myself? Would I stand out?” Even if a publication isn’t actively asking for submission readers, you could reach out to one you like reading and offer a few hours to volunteer. I volunteer for one where they publish annually so it’s only a few weeks a year as a commitment.
I’ve never done anything like this. From a selfish point of view, given volunteering is unpaid, I’ve always wondered what would be in it for me. I’ve been a bit sceptical about providing free labour, basically. But for you, it sounds like it’s been really developmental and a great chance to get a unique window on all this unpublished material and understand what everyone else is doing.
Being a submission reader is like getting a chance to read five magazines for free that no one else will get to read. It’s like being able to read everyone else’s coursework before you submit yours for an assessment and knowing which ones got As, i.e. which ones get published. That’s a very teacher metaphor! And it’s also a very meaningful thing to be able to contribute to, making sure that good art gets seen.
And finally, what’s one thing that people reading this newsletter can do to support your work?
Pre-order my debut novel now! It’s ‘The Malt Whisky Murders’, described as ‘a tasty tale of love, intrigue and murder’.