Helena Nelson

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Helena Nelson
Born1953
Knutsford
Education University of Manchester
University of York
OccupationPoet and publisher
Notable work
Starlight on Water

Helena Nelson (born 1953) is a poet, critic, publisher and the founding editor of HappenStance Press. [1] She has lived in Fife, Scotland, since 1977.

Fife Council area of Scotland

Fife is a council area and historic county of Scotland. It is situated between the Firth of Tay and the Firth of Forth, with inland boundaries to Perth and Kinross and Clackmannanshire. By custom it is widely held to have been one of the major Pictish kingdoms, known as Fib, and is still commonly known as the Kingdom of Fife within Scotland. Fife is one of the six local authorities part of the Edinburgh and South East Scotland city region.

Contents

Early life and education

Nelson was born in Knutsford in Cheshire, England. She attended the Universities of York and Manchester, achieving a BA Hons in English Literature, and an MA in eighteenth century literature respectively. [2] She worked for 25 years as a tutor in English and Communication at Fife College. [3]

Knutsford town in Cheshire, England, United Kingdom

Knutsford is a town in Cheshire, England, 14 miles (23 km) south-west of Manchester and 9 miles (14 km) north-west of Macclesfield. The population at the 2011 Census was 13,191.

Cheshire County of England

Cheshire is a county in North West England, bordering Merseyside and Greater Manchester to the north, Derbyshire to the east, Staffordshire and Shropshire to the south, and Flintshire and Wrexham County Borough in Wales to the west. Cheshire's county town is the City of Chester (118,200); the largest town is Warrington (209,700). Other major towns include Crewe (71,722), Ellesmere Port (55,715), Macclesfield (52,044), Runcorn (61,789), Widnes (61,464) and Winsford (32,610), Northwich (19,924)

University of York research-intensive plate glass university in the city of York, United Kingdom

The University of York is a collegiate plate glass research university, located in the city of York, England. Established in 1963, the campus university has expanded to more than thirty departments and centres, covering a wide range of subjects.

Poetry career and awards

Spectrum magazine were first to publish Nelson's work in 1992, followed by The Dark Horse. [2] She won the Keats Shelley Memorial Association Millennium Competition in 2000, with an essay about Keats. [2] In 2001, Nelson's debut pamphlet Mr and Mrs Philpott on Holiday at Auchterawe, & Other Poems was published by Kettillonia Press, the independent publisher established by novelist and poet James Robertson. [4] Her first full collection, Starlight on Water, was published in 2003 by The Rialto Press and was a joint winner of the Jerwood Aldeburgh Prize. [5] Her work was also included in the 2003 Modern Scottish Women Poets anthology. [6]

John Keats English Romantic lyric

John Keats was an English Romantic poet. He was one of the main figures of the second generation of Romantic poets, along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, despite his works having been in publication for only four years before his death from tuberculosis at the age of 25.

James Robertson is a Scottish writer who grew up in Bridge of Allan, Stirlingshire. He is the author of several short story and poetry collections, and has published six novels: The Fanatic, Joseph Knight, The Testament of Gideon Mack, And the Land Lay Still, The Professor of Truth, and To Be Continued…. The Testament of Gideon Mack was long-listed for the 2006 Man Booker Prize. Robertson also runs an independent publishing company called Kettillonia, and is a co-founder and general editor of the Scots language imprint Itchy Coo, which produces books in Scots for children and young people.

In 2005, she created HappenStance Press, using her own pamphlet, Unsuitable Poems, as the pilot publication. The press receives no public funding, but survives on subscription and sales. It specialises in poetry pamphlets, and has published well over 100 poets, focusing mainly on UK-based authors and first collections. [7] In 2010, HappenStance Press won the Michael Marks Publishers' Award. [8] Nelson also published twelve issues of a magazine called Sphinx, focused on poetry pamphlet publishing. Sphinx still survives as an online repository for poetry pamphlet reviews and articles about pamphlet publishers. [9] In 2013 Nelson published Fife Place Name Limericks, based on poems written for a Fife Libraries competition in the early 1990s and illustrated by Gillian Rose. [3]

Nelson occasionally runs workshops and talks on small-press publishing and reviewing. [10] In 2004 she took part in One Thousand Lines, the first schools tour by The Poetry Trust, alongside Matt Harvey and Neil Rollinson. [11] She has delivered a number of workshops on getting poetry published, and her advisory pamphlet How (not) to Get Your Poetry Published was expanded to a book-length guide in 2016, and reprinted in 2017. [12] She was an invited guest and speaker at the 2016 Scottish Women's Poetry Symposium organised by the University of Edinburgh. [13]

Matt Harvey is a British humourist and performance poet who has published a number of books and makes regular contributions to radio broadcasts.

Neil Rollinson is a British poet.

University of Edinburgh public research university in Edinburgh, Scotland

The University of Edinburgh, founded in 1582, is the sixth oldest university in the English-speaking world and one of Scotland's ancient universities. The university has five main campuses in the city of Edinburgh, with many of the buildings in the historic Old Town belonging to the university. The university played an important role in leading Edinburgh to its reputation as a chief intellectual centre during the Age of Enlightenment, and helped give the city the nickname of the Athens of the North.

Poetry in the age of hype and hypermedia

In 2013, Nelson had a review essay, Poetry in the Age of Hype, published in the poetry journal, The Dark Horse, [14] which questioned whether poetry can be 'overblurbed'; whereby, in attempting to reach new audiences and create greater interest not just in the book but also in poetry itself, publishers may be overloading their praise to the extent of posing a problem for poets attempting to live up to the 'hype'.

Nelson's thoughtful take caused the writer & poet Kei Miller to riff on this theme in his follow-up article in 2014, Poetry in the Age of Hypermedia. [14] In his essay, Miller expands the discussion further by examining the role hypermedia (Tweets, Facebook posts, online reviews etc.) plays in carrying the hype to potential readers. Miller contends that the World Wide Web is the most obvious example of hypermedia and that poetry must find a way to live with this world in establishing a place for itself in the future. [14]

"The age of hypermedia seems to prove there is still an audience hungry for poetry, whether it be the kind of poetry that articulates communal experiences and emotions or the kind that tries to give insight into particular experiences. It will be interesting to see, in the future, how this audience continues to shape poetry and, indeed, to create the poets they need. I think what this large audience demands, as any audience should, is simply a poetry which they can access intellectually, which turns its face towards them and considers them as worthy people to write for.... The future seems to want a poet who is as conversant with a perfect line of Shakespeare as they are with a perfect Tweet, poets who might consider adding to their literary craft with knowledge of video and sound production or HTML coding. The future is knocking. Welcome the hyperpoem!" [14]

Selected Works

Poetry

Other works

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References

  1. ↑ "Starlight on Water | The Rialto - the poetry magazine to read". www.therialto.co.uk. Retrieved 23 February 2018.
  2. 1 2 3 Modern Scottish Women Poets. Edinburgh: Canongate. 2003. p. 289. ISBN   9781847675071.
  3. 1 2 3 Dobbie, Fiona (10 June 2014). "There was a young lady called Helena..." Fife Today . Retrieved 25 February 2018.
  4. ↑ "Mr and Mrs Philpott on Holiday at Auchterawe & Other Poems". kettillonia.co.uk. Retrieved 23 February 2018.
  5. ↑ "Helena Nelson | Poetry | Scottish Poetry Library". www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk. Retrieved 23 February 2018.
  6. ↑ Modern Scottish Women Poets. Edinburgh: Canongate. 2003. p. 189. ISBN   9781847675071.
  7. ↑ User, Super. "About HappenStance". www.happenstancepress.com. Retrieved 23 February 2018.
  8. ↑ "Michael Marks Awards for Poetry Pamphlets". The British Library. Retrieved 23 February 2018.
  9. ↑ Sarah. "About Sphinx". www.sphinxreview.co.uk. Retrieved 23 February 2018.
  10. ↑ "Author details | Scottish Book Trust". www.scottishbooktrust.com. Retrieved 23 February 2018.
  11. ↑ "Tour Talk". Poetry Paper. 2: 19. 2005.
  12. ↑ "How (not) to Get Your Poetry Published - Helena Nelson". HappenStance. Retrieved 23 February 2018.
  13. ↑ "Scottish Women's Poetry Symposium 2016". The University of Edinburgh. 20 October 2016. Retrieved 27 February 2018.
  14. 1 2 3 4 Miller, Kei (2014). "Poetry in the Age of Hypermedia". Wasafiri. 29 (3): 52–55. doi:10.1080/02690055.2014.918767.
  15. ↑ "Books round up". The Scotsman. 12 June 2005. Retrieved 25 February 2018.
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