Jacqueline Gabbitas of Brittle Star expresses an urge to give writers a foot on the publishing ladder
Jacqueline Gabbitas
Jacqueline Gabbitas is a co-editor at literary magazine Brittle Star, as well as being a part-time Marketing Manager for Enitharmon Press, a lecturer at the University of East London, and a poet. She tells us about the importance of getting to know a publication and reading writers’ guidelines before submitting your work.
How did you become involved with Brittle Star?
Brittle Star began life as a platform for a writers’ group in South London to publish members’ poems and stories - although it later broadened its remit to include non-members work as well. It worked as a collective, with members editing, designing, producing and distributing it.
When the group dissolved, one member, Jo Homan, wanted to keep the magazine going and invited Louisa Hooper and me to join the editorial team. This was in 2002. We met through the Poetry School in London.
A year later Jo had her first baby and stepped back from the magazine at which point we invited three other editors to join: David Floyd, Martin Parker and Tina Tse.
The current editorial team is: Louisa Hooper, David Floyd, Martin Parker and me, and we have a sales and subscription administrator, Lynda How. We produce the magazine voluntarily (mainly because we can’t afford to pay ourselves), and all of us, excluding Martin who’s a designer, are writers as well.
What is your role with the magazine?
I’m an editor, but this involves more than just reading poems and stories. We try to share as much of the work as possible between all of us, but there are some areas in which we have individual specialist skills so it makes sense to use them: for example, Martin designs the magazine.
Louisa has just passed over the full administration to me, after having done it heroically for almost eight years, so I now answer the correspondence, send out the acceptances and rejections, market the magazine, organise launches, do the accounts and bookkeeping and so on.
We all read the submissions and make decisions on what goes in, as well as proofreading the final copy.
We all have a sense of the vision of Brittle Star, although I tend to be the one coming up with some of the more ambitious projects and ideas such as the interviews, close-readings and translation projects.
Lynda is a god-send who came to us from a work-experience position as part of her undergraduate course at Middlesex University. She manages the database now and is implementing a campaign to increase badly needed subscriptions - did I say we get no Arts Council Funding? No? Ah, well the magazine exists solely on sales and subscriptions - anything we make goes straight into production and promotion.
What is your professional background?
I am the part-time Marketing Manager for Enitharmon Press (an independent publisher that produces some incredibly beautiful books) and I also teach at the University of East London. I worked for eight years as the administrator, then marketing manager, of the Poetry School in London. I also run the odd poetry workshop.
What is the motivation behind Brittle Star?
Our raison d’etre is to give new writers a foot on the publishing ladder without having to compete for space with established writers. We also publish writers who have books when we think they should have more exposure than they currently have - these are writers from small independent publishers, not the big ones - there are no Fabers, Carcanets, Picadors, Capes or Enitharmons in our magazine - and even then if they’ve got more than two books out we won’t take them.
We also have interviews with established writers (interviewed by new writers), including Galway Kinnell, Myra Schneider and David Constantine. Our hope is that they, as well as our other features (the Diary of A Reader, the Close readings etc) might enlighten and inspire our readers.
How do you think it differs from other literary magazines?
Other magazines have similar interviews and give space to new writing, but always alongside established writers. I admire this and recognise the value of having your work published in an issue with, say, Marilyn Hacker, but there is also value in having your work published alongside your contemporaries.
Paper magazines only have so much space and once you’ve allocated all the regular features, the space for new writers is often much less than that given to the established poets. Another thing we don’t do is review because we don’t have the space for them.
One relatively new feature is the Star Questions - a series of ‘60-minute’ type interviews with people who do a massive amount, for no or very little money, to promote literature world-wide. We’ve had Katherine Gallagher, Anne Stewart, Ishbel McFarlane, Gabriel Griffin and Maggie Sawkins so far. The next issue’s Star will be Charles Johnson.
We felt it was important to highlight these people and talk a little bit about their passion for the projects they organise, from a website to promote poets to an international literary festival, to a reading event where every poem recited is learned by heart.
We always launch each issue, which is very common for little magazines, but what’s less common is that we try to launch each one at different venues. Having said that we’ve been very lucky with venues and in some of them the managers are just so lovely that we can’t resist going back to them.
John Lake and Linda Hubbard at the Barbican Library, John Rety at the Torriano Meeting House and Mick Scott at Keats House (all in London) immediately come to mind.
Do you have a favourite poem or short story?
In the magazine there are a good number of poems and stories we’ve published that make me think: ‘Yeah, that’s a damn fine piece of writing’, but there are also pieces that might not be totally finished but I still like because they have energy or potential that needs just a little bit of work to realise the poem/story fully.
We introduced the Rising Stars because we were receiving submissions from writers that sparkled; people like Andrew Bailey, Anna Robinson and Julia Lewis, off the top of my head, but there are many others - just look through the back-issues.
We publish work that we enjoy, that might challenge current trends or fads, that we can take a risk on: Anna Robinson’s Life in the Giant’s Mouth (issue 12) is such a poem and George Beguno’s story, The Dwarf’s Wife, (issue 19) travels similar territory, but we also publish more conventional poetry. What’s important is quality.
Christopher North’s poem, ‘Taino’, (issue 19) is a good example: heartfelt, intelligent, elegant tercet form, straightforward narrative with a sophisticated almost epiphanic ending, using simple diction. A poem well written, and one that we were delighted was highly commended by the Forward Prize Judges this year.
Now, outside of the magazine there are a million poems and stories I could write about (and take far too much space to do it in!). The list would go on and on, but these are some of the writers I like: Jeremy Hooker, Mimi Khalvati, Marilyn Hacker, Galway Kinnell, Ali Smith, Angela Carter, T.S. Eliot, Ted Hughes, Jeanette Winterson, Alan Garner, Terry Pratchett…
Two writers I really admire are the poet, Mimi Khalvati and the novelist, Alan Garner. There are critics I admire too such as Helen Vendler.
What do you look for in a submission?
Quality and care. It’s important to me that the writers believe in the art form, and nine-times-out-of-ten you can tell this from the writing - sometimes a poem or story might not quite work, but you just know instinctively that the writer is trying to make it work - it’s there in the phrasing, the lineation, the music of the piece, all of these things and more.
I’m not interested in a poem or story that fits a mould (or mode) or ticks workshop boxes. In a piece of literature I want stimulation, companionship, surprise, a challenge, wit (but, god, please, no more irony!).
Of course, this is what I look for in a submission, the other editors look for other things, which is why the magazine is so alive with variety. But we all look for quality!
One thing that bugs me personally is when the writer clearly knows nothing of the magazine - these are the ones that often expect to be paid - and have never seen a copy of it (and with the Poetry Library archive there’s no excuse for that) or read the guidelines - do not send us 10 poems, we’ll only send them back and ask you to choose what you want us to read according to our guidelines!
I also dislike presumptive covering letters or over-familiar ones, like the ones that say: ‘Hey, you’ll love these poems’ or (and this is especially common in emails) ‘Check these out!’ Or ones that direct us to people’s websites. Or ones that think we don’t know anything about literature (honestly, we do get them).
Do you write poetry or short stories yourself?
Yes, I do. I write both poetry and short stories, but my love is poetry.
What do you find the most challenging aspects of editing Brittle Star?
The time it takes, really. Having done it for about eight years now voluntarily, the challenge is fitting it around my paid work. We’re all in the same boat. We publish three issues a year and you can assume we’ll receive about 200 submissions per issue (sometimes more).
At least three editors will have read each submission, but more often than not all of us will have, and we have to organise meetings and production days around our deadline dates, which can be a little tricky sometimes.
You’ve got to remember that we’re writers and artists too so we have to reserve some creative energy for our own work - and reading is a very creative process, reading submissions more so.
Because of this, we sometimes have what seems like long stretches before we get back to people, but we aim to respond to work within eight weeks of the deadline and most often do. Without this submission deadline, we wouldn’t effectively be able to produce the magazine. There would be anarchy!
We try to be as fair and generous as possible to our submitters: if they ask for feedback, we will give them feedback if we can. We’re aware how difficult it can be to send your work out and get it rejected, so we try to be as positive as we can. Often, when we give feedback, writers will re-submit the work and it will be ten times better: enough for us to reconsider it for the next issue!
What do you enjoy most about it?
What I love, and I mean really love, is seeing the writers develop. We’ve a list as long as my arm and longer of writers that we’ve published quite early on or even for the first time, that are not only going on to get published or win prizes, but are writing really exciting things.
I also like the nice things people say about us - but that’s just vanity, isn’t it? One thing that touches me is the support we get from contributors and readers.
We run a Friends scheme called Gold and Silver Stars, and people can become Stars by making donations - and the number of Stars that keep on re-subscribing just tells us something about the confidence they have in the magazine. We have Stars from way back when we introduced it in issue 10. I’m quite proud of that.
What inspires you?
This is a very tricky one. Earth - clay in particular - is always inspiring and inspiriting. And the way that words are by turns robust and delicate. I love accent (I can be reduced to tears when I watch Kes even before the ending, because the voices are incredibly beautiful).
Running against the grain inspires me; and talking about grain I get a lot of creative energy from wood and forests. And light. Light is important. And texture. And, weirdly, churches - I say weirdly because I’m not Christian at all, but I find churches open me up to poetry - it’s probably the quietness. I like quiet, and cold places.
I’m inspired a lot when I’m reading - often something wedges in my mind and stays with me for days until I can get it down on paper. It’s a tricky one to pin down, this!
I see being inspired for my writing as separate from being inspired about the magazine - the things that drive the development of the magazine most often come from talking to writers and readers, and also stem from what we as writers want to know about writing and publishing.
What advice would you offer an aspiring writer?
Read. Read lots - don’t be afraid to be influenced, it’s not a bad thing! Try to learn as much as you can - join writing groups and classes, treat your writing as you would any artform: you wouldn’t expect to be able to play the piano just because you like and appreciate music, so don’t think it’s different for the written word.
Also, build up a good CV and do your research - reading the guidelines of magazines takes ten minutes and shows the editors that you respect their journal as well as the job they do.
What comes next for Brittle Star?
There are a number of things in the pipeline. We need to increase sales and subscriptions, so we’ll be starting a campaign for that. Next year sees our tenth birthday, so we’re hoping to set some publishing and education projects up for that, which we’ll need funding for (aargh the dreaded funding application!).
We’re also talking to a Russian writer in Koktebel about translating Ukranian poets and storywriters and we’re having discussions with The Academy of Living Wisdom about some online seminars. That should keep us going for a while. I think. Yes.
For more information please visit www.brittlestar.org.uk
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