What next?

I had an email recently saying thanks for entering their competition but I couldn't remember sending anything! I had to look back through all my entries for the year and there it was back in March. No wonder I couldn't remember.  I have no idea why I sent it so early, very unusual for me. Actually, why did they wait so long to thank me?  Hummm!

The online poetry feedback course with The Poetry School has now ended.  It was useful to see where I can improve the poems I contributed and I really admired others contributions. There were some very good poets in the group. We all started off a bit gingerly but each week the poems just got better.  There were some amazing poems. I'm a bit relieved it's finished though as giving feeding back on so many poems was very time consuming and I'm not that good at it! Good practice though.

I'm not sure where I am going next. I've not signed up for any new courses and what I'm thinking is maybe to do more editing of poems I have to try and improve them. I want to take time to read more. I'd like to take a break from writing for a while and then just mess around with words - no thinking about publication and deadlines. I do still have a story to edit and I still can't seem to motivate myself to start.

I'm not going to make any decisions now. Christmas is coming up with lots of other things needing my time and I find I get stressed even when I think I'm not! So some time out will be good. I'll review things in the new year.

Poem

Lost for words

Deadlines haunt,

dates rush at me

then pass.

Writing is sparse;

undisciplined words

run riot

with unformed sentences

across white paper,

refusing to stay.

The ruled page

stares back, fully formed,

neat and mocking.

Prometheus Poem (+playlist)

http://www.youtube.com/v/4j32vCtjbqU?list=UUSkMYuTbyN9hi8HaVDmiYdw&version=3&autohide=1&attribution_tag=usDnOMGfCfev2BzMePKwMQ&showinfo=1&autoplay=1&feature=share

Mindful Writing Day

My small stone:

Drizzle peppers the garden from a grey flung sheet.

Geraniums and Begonias pinprick red and pink hope.

http://www.writingourwayhome.com/small-stones/mindful-writing-day-1st-nov/

Editing and the strangeness of being translated!

Lately I have been doing a fair bit of editing of  poems.  I've gone back after a long time to see what is not working with some poems of mine and with a few it's been a near massacre!  On the other hand the results have been good.....well, I hope. I hate editing out works or sentences I really like but when they don't work they have to go. That's hard.  There is one word I love but every time it's been in a poem it's been suggested I cut it!  Huh! One of these days I'll use it.  I'm determined!

I haven't actually written anything new but I am considering some poems for publication and I've had some good news.  I have had another poem published in Areopagus and finally I have six poems that were translated into Romanian by Mariana Zavati Gardner (a fellow member of OU Poets) published in a Romanian arts magazine entitled Pro Saeculum.  Zavati sent me a copy of the magazine, a huge thing with over 200 pages! and there are my poems with a small piece I wrote about my writing and a photo.  It all looks rather strange in Romanian!

Giving feedback

I dread giving feedback on other peoples work but the new online Poetry School feedback course has started and that's what we all have to do.  However, I feel rather out of my depth.  Some on the course are much more experienced than I and are giving quite in depth feedback to everyone's poems.  It's been a little scary!  But I have gingerly done my first lot of feedback, brief though it was, and it seems I'm not alone and one or two others feel the same way. I guess the confident ones will always be first to make moves and the rest of us have to learn to take the plunge.  I agonised over some poems and there was one I just didn't understand and was at a loss to know what to say. I wonder if it's just me not seeing it. I hate being negative and try my best to find something to be positive about.  I'd hate to hurt peoples feelings as I know what that feels like.

Tutor feedback is due in a weeks time.  It will be interesting to see what she says.  I'm actually more interested in what she makes other peoples poems - I might learn something!

Result!

I cannot believe it.  I went on to the Coursera website yesterday to see if the results were through on the songwriting course I took.  They were.  I gained 87.1%.  I am totally gobsmacked!  I even printed off the result and the Statement of Accomplishment as proof I did it.