Have you ever been asked to write a blurb for a new poetry book or read one that turned you off? Here’s some light-hearted advice from Scottish poet Helena Nelson.

WHAT NOT TO WRITE ON THE BACK  JACKET OF YOUR DEBUT COLLECTION
by Helena Nelson

This book is not bad.
A number of these poems feature the poet’s dog: George.
The author’s mother recommends this book.
Boris Johnson recommends this book.
Most of the poems are quite short.
Poetry is not for everybody.
These poems are accessible if reasonable adjustments are made.
Many of these poems were written while dusting.
The poet applied three times for funding to assist in the completion
of this book.
Please buy this book.
The poems in this book have universal resonance some of the time.
Includes five villanelles and three sestinas.
There is a glossary of difficult words for readers new to poetry.
The poet skillfully employs seven types of metonymy.
The main theme is death.

~ from Down with Poetry! (Glenrothes: HappenStance, 2016)

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Blurbing new poetry books is a tricky business. Your task is to help sell the book, but how do you do justice to it without sounding too cliché or over the top?

I always read the blurbs on the back covers of new single poet collections and sometimes find them pretentious, intimidating, even unbelievable. I sometimes run away screaming. And I’m someone who actually likes poetry.

At the Scottish Poetry Library, Nelson said this about her poem:

In Issue 25 of The Dark Horse (2011), there was an article called ‘The Blurbonic Plague’ by the late, lamented Dennis O’Driscoll. It was about the awfulness of much of the text on back jackets of new poetry books. This struck a chord close to my heart, and also gave me the courage to form a deliberate policy for HappenStance Press, which ever since has been officially ‘anti-blurb’. When I issue books and pamphlets, the text on the back cover never includes words like ‘new and exciting’, and I don’t commission blurbs or, worse still, get poets to write their own. But then what do you write? The truth? Frequently that won’t do either. It’s easier to say what not to write, and have some fun with that. So I made a list, some of which turned into this poem.

I thoroughly enjoyed her list and her wry humor (some of the suggestions could also apply to things one should not include in a manuscript submission cover letter).

Truly, what could be more enticing (esp. to a potential non-poet reader) than a platter full of shop talk? We all eat metonymy, synecdoche, asyndeton and caesura for breakfast, right? 🙂

And they say poetry is a hard sell . . .

Actually, I think Nelson is definitely onto something with her “anti-blurb” stance. If a blurb can make you laugh, wouldn’t you be more apt to buy the book? Hold the mega hype, please.

Here is Nelson reciting the poem:

How do you feel about book blurbs? How seriously do you take them?

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Helena Nelson (Nell Nelson) is the originator and editor of HappenStance Press as well as a poet in her own right. Her first Rialto collection Starlight on Water was a Jerwood/Aldeburgh First Collection winner. Her second was Plot and Counterplot from Shoestring Press. She also writes and publishes light verse – Down With Poetry! (HappenStance, 2016) and Branded (Red Squirrel Press, 2019). In 2016, she published a HappenStance best seller: How (Not) to Get Your Poetry Published, a book that collects the insights and useful ideas she has gathered over the last twelve years in poetry publishing.

She reviews widely, writes a publisher’s blog regularly, and also curates the pamphlet review site Sphinx Review.

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The lovely and talented Tanita S. Davis is hosting the Roundup at {fiction, instead of lies}. Waltz on over to check out the full menu of poetic goodness being shared around the blogosphere this week. Happy March!

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