Dr William Stephenson (Reader in
English Literature) is about to celebrate the launch of his second short poetry
collection, after winning two poetry competitions in 2012. He was a winner of the
Iota Shots Awards 2012, which led to the pamphlet of 16 poems, Rain Dancers
in the Data Cloud (out now on Templar Poetry, and available in the campus
bookshop) and the Ravenglass Poetry Prize 2012 (judged by Don Paterson), which
led to the short collection of 24 poems Source Code (available in
March / April from Ravenglass Poetry Press via Amazon). William
notes: ‘I guess collections are like the proverbial London buses; you wait for
years and then two come along at once…’
William began writing in the mid-1980s,
and as an undergraduate at Cambridge he joined 'Virtue Without Terror' a
workshop group that included some future bestselling writers; Joseph O'Neill
(who would go on to write Netherland), Edmund de Waal (author of the The
Hare with The Amber Eyes) and Joel Lane (who has published novels, and
three collections of poetry with Arc). While still a student, he published
poetry in some magazines, including Iron and one of the earliest issues
of The Rialto.
After years of focusing on academic
publications, in 2007 Will decided to throw himself back into poetry, and has
shared some of the details of his writing and publishing process:
I set up a strict training regime of reading the poetry of X then
writing in their style, having already decided that a novel - at this stage -
was too big a gamble with my time.
I managed to start publishing in magazines from 2009, when I got my
first acceptance from Envoi, after a string of the usual rejections;
since then I've been fortunate enough to get into Anon, Iota, The
North, The Rialto and other magazines In about 2011 I thought
I was ready to enter competitions, and decided to aim for those where books,
rather than money, were the prizes (on the theory that competitions with big
cash prizes would attract established poets who already had several books out,
but these same established figures perhaps wouldn't necessarily enter
competitions to publish more books).
I was lucky enough to win the first two such competitions I entered.
William mainly teaches English
Literature, but his recent success has led him to get more involved in the
Creative Writing programme, and he has taken several sessions with final year
poetry students to discuss his writing and publication experiences.
Fans of William’s poetry have more to
look forward to: ‘I'm currently working on a full length collection, but this
is going to take a long time.’
No comments:
Post a Comment