on endorsements

thoughts on the literary begging bowl

I have arrived in the season where a manuscript turns into a book-shaped kind of weather, and suddenly I’m meant to ask other poets (real, breathing poets with their own deadlines and doubts) to say something encouraging about it that will reassure others that it’s worth reading.

I find this excruciating. There’s something uniquely exposing about sending your work out with a little note that essentially says: Would you mind validating my artistic output of the last couple of years in 2-3 sentences? No pressure.

It’s not that poets aren’t generous. They are. More that the whole endeavour feels like standing naked in a spotlight holding out a bowl. I’d rather be neck-deep in a river, or lost in an archive, or doing almost anything other than this polite literary begging.

And yet – though I may kick against endorsements (a friend of mine calls them ‘puffs’ for good reason) - they have become part of the ecology of publishing. We endorse each other’s books because we know how vulnerable it is to make them. We say yes when we can, and we try not to take it personally when someone can’t. Thus far I’ve had two very kind declines (from folk who have a policy of saying no to everyone - and I believe them, they are famous and teach a lot, must be deluged, now feel bad for asking), two resounding yesses and a ghosting.

So here I am again, sending my little messages into the ether, cringing as I press send, trying to remind myself that asking is not the same as imposing. It’s simply another way of saying: This book matters to me. I hope it might matter to you too.

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My second poetry collection, Borrowed Ground, will be out on 31st August with Broken Sleep Books.