Two poetry events and writing longer pieces

 I am writing this before our sweet doggy starts his day and takes all my time away. There hasn't been much time for writing lately, and for two days I was pup sitting, and may have to do the same tomorrow morning.

Over the last year I have been busy submitting poetry and flash, and the odd short story. This has taken me away from the longer writing projects, and recently I realised how much I was missing it, or more to the point, I felt low and couldn't work out why. There were all sorts of reasons, but as I was searching for a poem on my laptop, I came across something I began at least a year ago, and temporarily lost (I couldn't remember what I called the file). Having found it, I decided that I would review it when I had time. This is the last part of aTrilogy in the making. Reading through it, I made some notes, which launched me back into one of the other parts to this Trilogy adding things and changing things, as the last part is linked more to the second (or it may be the first - not sure which order they will come out in yet!).

Progress is slow due to time constraints and getting myself into the right mindset. As you may know, I'm not really a plotter. I write, stop, and work out in my head what comes next. I have no ending and rely on instinct and hope that it will come right. It usually does. I believe in letting my characters lead me, and that happened to me this morning while writing a new scene. Roughly knowing what was to happen I began. As I was writing my main character led me back to the previous story and some dark scenes there. Not in any detail, just enough to whet the appetite of readers. I am really pleased with the way it went. There is a long way to go with this as writing is still slow and I am tending to review/edit as I go, which sometimes I do. Every piece of work I write is tackled differently. I'm not one for set ways.

The back end of last month a friend and I went to Outspoken again, at the Southbank, London. The poets were Alycia Pirmohamed, Will Harris and Sarah Howe. Musicians were Nino SGL (a rapper highly praised by Stormy and Oreglo, and fusion band incorporating jazz, rock and reggae. My favourite of the evening was Sarah Howe, and I loved her poem about her mum-in-law's laundry. I must admit I was mainly for the poets than the music, but each to their own.

The photos were taken in order of appearance - Alycia Pirmohamed, Will Harris, Nino SLG, Sarah Howe and Oreglo.

The evening before we went along to The Poetry Library in the Royal Festival Hall, London for an event entitled Non-Human Poetry. I think the best thing I can do with this is print what was said about it on the website:

The event presents a performance-lecture from Fiona Glen and Nina Hanz, who have written on, to and as mushrooms – pushing their writing to express how fungi spore, sprawl, consume and bloom.

Glen and Hanz read from their recently published pamphlet, Mycoglossia, and reflect on how their project digests and recomposes cultural matter that surrounds it, like a mycelial web.

This is followed by Mara-Daria Cojocaru, who presents poetry co-produced by humans and companion dogs.

Combining layers of human language with visual and olfactory elements, Cojocaru presents a multi-species poems created with her dogs, as well as eight additional dog-human teams.

Multi-species poetry can help humans appreciate the ways in which their best animal friends perceive the world differently, and can, in part, actually be read by dogs as well.

 This was an interesting evening and very different to anything I'd been to before. I have attempted to write some poetry with Rue, but I don't think this will be something I'll be doing again! The presentation about mushrooms and fungi was certainly thought provoking, and reminded me of the books I've read on how trees and fungi interact in the wood wild web, and I have touched on it in my own poetry.

My submissions have slowed down this month, and while I am working on a couple of longer projects, I doubt I will be submitting as much. I am beginning to enjoy the feeling of writing something longer, something I can get my teeth into and become absorbed into the world of my characters.

Until next time, happy reading and writing.