Post Christmas?

I hope everyone had a great Christmas. I finally succumbed to the virus doing the rounds and after a week of a bad throat and hacking cough the cold broke on Boxing Day. Thankfully I wasn't entertaining over Christmas - it was just the four of us - so I was able to get rest and have been vegetating in front of the TV, reading, sleeping and helping with the annual jigsaw puzzle when I felt like it.

On Christmas Day morning while I still feeling pretty okay I was, as usual, first up. I love that time alone with a CD of Christmas carols and a mug of tea, candles lighting the room. And guess what I was also doing? I was editing some old poems!

Reading wise I have some poetry books by my bedside and instead of reading a chapter of my current book I've been reading a few poems before I go to sleep. I've just finished Christopher James' England Underwater. This is the third collection of his I've read and I thoroughly enjoy his quirkiness. The poems are beautiful, often unusual and amusing and stimulate the mind (where does he get his ideas from?). I shall have to track down the missing volume from my collection of his work. They are poems I will read again and no doubt get something new out of.

I've now taken the Emma Press Anthology of Motherhood upstairs. I started reading it earlier in the year but it's been sitting on the coffee table for ages without a look. So, this has become my plan - to read poetry before I retire to sleep!

So to make up for not getting here to wish every one a happy Christmas I'd like now to wish all my readers a very HAPPY NEW YEAR. Come back soon!

Areopagus Anthology now available

The Areopagus Anthology is now out. A bit disappointing that more of those who write for the quarterly magazine did not contribute but great to have something to celebrate 100 issues of the magazine. Their 25th anniversary issue which arrived a couple of days ago had a great article about the magazine's beginnings including the old Amstrad computer the editor worked on and to keep up with production took it away with him to a work's conference, including the printer - something unheard of in the days before laptops.  Certain remarks were made by his colleagues, especially about the noisy printer working in the evenings! This brought back memories of early computers I worked with including a dot matrix printer (which is still in the attic).

Anyway, the anthology can be brought through Amazon on Kindle for £2.06. Do take a look (I have a poem in there!)

Admin....it has to be done sometime.

It's getting to that time of year when I look back on my writing achievements. But that's for another post because this morning I took time to rearrange (yet again) my poetry into two folders. Having spent ages putting poems into alphabetical order with notes about submissions (if and when they were published, their progress etc.) last year - or was it early this year? I have found that it isn't really working. So now I have taken out all those that have been published and put them together (still in order) in one of the folders which also contains my 'small stones' poems and a bunch of rough drafts. All the unpublished poetry is in the other folder.

This has helped in several ways. Firstly I can see how few are published (sigh) and see how many poems are sitting in the other folder going nowhere. Yes, a fair few of them are 'out' and I am waiting to see if they might make it to the other file but there are many others lingering! Some poems have never been sent anywhere while others have been submitted several times. This got me thinking. Do the ones I never send out stay there because I'm not happy with them? And if so, why am I not editing them?  A lot to ponder on. I looked at some I have never submitted. Some do have notes about re-editing, others have no notes and some have some handwritten edits on them. I immediately thought what a waste. If some are that bad perhaps I should just abandon them. But I hate doing that unless they really are rubbish (I admitted that one or two might fall into that category).

I set about looking more carefully at a few and began to see what needed doing. My poetry has come a long way since I wrote some of the poems but a good edit might do it. In fact I have made a start and am determined to resurrect some of these and get them sent out - ah a new goal for next year!

I've also been remiss in updating the results of submissions. I do keep a main book which is up to date but I often fail to follow this up in the folders. I also realised that in the last few months I have written quite a lot of new poems, including a whole sequence. None of these are in the folder, including the ones recently sent out. Admittedly I have had a busy year but it's to my advantage to keep up with this.

Certainly this has been an exercise worth tackling. I've been meaning to do it for ages and it has opened my eyes to the poems I have and the potential within in them.

Josephine Corcoran's pamphlet launch

Jo Bell

 Here are my pictures from Josephine Corcoran's pamphlet launch last night at The Poetry Cafe in Covent Garden. The pictures are not great as I was sitting at the back and I didn't want to use a distracting flash but Isabel Rogers blog has some nice photos and a great post about the evening which I can't better!

It was great to meet Josephine who I have followed for a while (I think we originally 'met' through an online poetry course with The Poetry School) and to hear her read from The Misplaced House. I was also pleased to hear Jo Bell read as I know a little of her work. She was funny! Other poets reading were Joe Duggan and Matt Haw. It was a really good evening with great poetry.

Josephine Corcoran

Josephine Corcoran

My signed copy!

After disappointment comes......

After the disappointment of yesterday came news that Areopagus are printing the two poems I sent them in their Christmas issue. After all these years (they've been publishing me for quite a number of years now) I've recently been chatting via email with the editor about writing, self publishing and books. We seem to have a lot in common and it is nice to have someone else to chat to about writing as I find it a lonely occupation at times. My friends just don't understand my obsession!

At my Friday sport session I got chatting to a lady who is relatively new and we also found we had a lot in common. She writes poetry and she seems to have the same sense of humour as me (a bit off the wall at times!). We are going to swop poems on Friday! It was great to talk to someone and not feel guilty about talking so much about writing.

I've always avoided writing groups but I'm wondering whether I should join one or perhaps to attend a few courses. These are things I am contemplating in those odd moments when I have time at the moment.

Disappointment

I should not write a blog post when I'm in this mood. I'm bound to say something I regret! This morning I had a email from the editor of Acumen to say my poems didn't make it. Deep down I already knew this. Some time ago now I was informed  that two of the four poems I submitted had made it to the shortlist and that I would hear by the end of November whether they had made it into the journal for January. Of course I was excited and the waiting was awful. One minute I was up, the next down. When I didn't hear I feared the worst. So it doesn't come as a shock just a huge disappointment. I was told there were around 1,000 poems submitted and the decision was hard. Is that a comfort? Not really. I just wanted publication in something a little more prestigious on my poetry walk. Right now I'm not sure what I feel so I just won't think about it.