Finished - poetry challenge completed

Well, I have reached my goal and the last poem in my year long challenge to write a poem a day has been written.

The poem is in fact entitled The Last Poem, a fitting end to the struggles to get words on paper (or screen). I feel there should be some sort of celebration, but what? I am not even sure what I feel right now. Part relief, perhaps, and a sort of loss.

In a way these poems chart my life for the last year. They relate to the seasons, environmental issues, lockdown, mini stories, funny, odd, quirky and a hand full of what might be called erotic poems. I've tried to be a bit more experimental in places, though that doesn't come so easy to me. Most are free verse but some rhyme. I think there is one villanelle. I rarely use form. Perhaps that should be my next challenge....NO, not another challenge!

What should I do with all these poems? Well, some are out there, though one poetry pamphlet competition I entered has declared its list and I wasn't even on the longlist. I am waiting on the result of another. I had another magazine rejection where three poems were sent. There is one other magazine I am waiting on - the only submission I did in April.

I think I need to step back from the poems for a bit now. There will be some of these that will never be good enough, that will never be submitted. Some can be reworked and some definitely need a title change! At the end of the day I might just self-publish. For now, I am proud that I have achieved my challenge. It forced me to write every day. I didn't sit around waiting for the muse to take me. Sometimes it was a case of just putting words on page to see where they took me. I wrote fast, edited as I went then shut down the file. I'd only go back to it if I thought I had something better to say, a word replacement. I would go back and edit if I thought the poem was close to being complete, say if I thought it suitable for a magazine or competition.

Most poems were written straight to laptop. The only spell I really struggled was while I was on holiday last year. I could not write at all. I then had major catch-ups. Yet I always got there. I'd binge write to get back on track. In fact I have over 365 poems because some weeks I wrote extra.

I have periods when I read others work, like this morning when I read a poem online and thought, that's why I don't make it. This is brilliant. I feel I can't compete with that. It's that I'm not good enough voice that gets into my head. There are far too many good poets out there all struggling to get noticed. I try to tell myself that just because my poetry isn't accepted doesn't make me a bad poet, because I know others go through this. However, it doesn't make it any easier. The competition is overwhelming, the chances so few. So, I feel it is down to me now.

A small success

The latest copy of Salopeot Magazine (Salopian Poetry Society) arrived a few days ago. This was my consolation prize - a free subscription to their magazine for the year. Flicking through it I noticed the title of a poem, and thought hey? I have a poem with that title. Looked again, yes it's mine! They've used one of the entries I sent to their competition! I guess every little helps. However, it was a surprise as I didn't realise they would do that.

I am trying to put together poems for pamphlet competitions with deadlines at the end of the month. They are very different collections but with both I have that business of trying to order the poems right. Certainly the first collection I have edited, moved, taken out, inserted new ones and rearranged them so many times. I think I am there now, but I want to let them sit for a few more days before looking at them again. All the poems have been written in the last year as part of my poetry challenge to write one-a-day. I wonder if that's good or too soon?

I wondered whether after I finish my challenge - I have eight weeks to go - whether I might move on to something different. I've been thinking about the novel and whether I can save it. I sort of know what I have to do but not sure how to do it. The thought is daunting as I have so many drafts, it's all got rather messy.

Maybe I should try some flash fiction again. Certainly there are some short stories that could be edited, but somehow I can't quite work myself up to tackle them. For now I shall just concentrate on finishing my challenge and getting the pamphlets put together and submitted. Then I shall see how I feel.

Cataloging my one-a-day poems and some sad news

Now I am into week 41 of my write-a-poem-a-day-for-a-year I have realised that to track down certain poems is difficult because there is no record of what is in each week. I just have a folder with files numbered by week  so I have to search through each file to find what I want. I have in fact submitted a few poems, but the task of searching is becoming silly. So, today I decided to sort this. Not being a person with a liking for spreadsheets I have resorted to old fashioned pen and notebook. In fact I am using the one but last school exercise book once used by sons. This one is a Year 8 Spanish exercise book!  Once the used pages are ripped out there is plenty of paper left for the purpose. I have a few columns and enter by week the title of each poem written. At present the amount of ticks in the submitted column indicates how many times I've sent it out (where to is entered in another book). There aren't many ticks yet, but one is on it's third submission. This will help a great deal for now. I've written about half the year's poems in so far and noticed a few things, like how awful some of the titles are, and how I love some of the others, how some poems move on from the last written. I can also see by their titles around the time I wrote them in the year, the influences I had to write them. It's quite interesting. There are a mixture of quite silly things that will never see the light of day, a lot of climate stuff later on and I noticed a few poems ended up with titles I'd used already!

I came across some poems I'd forgotten about and were a nice surprise, some cringe-worthy, some laugh out loud and some deep stand out poems. I also realised that some weeks I had more than seven poems and a couple with only six poems (I did add to one to make up the seven, though I shall more than 365 poems when I've finished. That sounds a great deal, but possibly only a handful will be good enough to submit. However, there are others I will edit when I've finished if I think they are worth the effort, even if I have to re-write them.

This has been a useful exercise and the start of the next phase. I hope to have the remaining poems entered in the next few days, though of course I'm still writing, but I see the end of the tunnel now.

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Ollie making himself at home in the new cage

I have written about my son's pet rats before. Having failed to bond the rescue rats with Rizzo, it was time to buy a new cage for Charlie and Ollie. The temporary one was hard work. The doors opened inwards and frequently the hooks caught on clothing, it took two of us to clean and it wasn't easy to get the two boys out. The new cage is identical to Rizzo's and is just ideal. The two settled into their new home, and while we still tried bonding Rizzo with them, Charlie particularly would end up fighting with chunks of fur being pulled from Rizzo. It has been stressful for us to watch and while some fighting is normal we separated them many times to avoid anything worse. Rizzo seems very at home alone these days. I get him out in the mornings and we share breakfast. Well, he would steal my cereal, so I gave him his own breakfast of oats, soya cheese and a dollop of soya yogurt. Sometimes I'd add blueberries and carrot, but the soya products were pounced upon first! Often Rizzo comes out at night too. He appears to like whistling and my singing. He had a rendition of the Bee Gees Staying Alive the other morning!

Charlie

Charlie and Ollie have been out just together lately, but sadly little Charlie died on Friday. I found him lying in the bottom of the cage. There was no warning. He'd been out in the morning, taken food and seemed perky. So this was a bit of a shock. I don't know the cause. It could be related to his start in life, the infection he (and Ollie) had before they came here, or age, though he was only just over a year old (life span of a rat is around two years).

Because it was already dark when I found him we wrapped him in kitchen roll and put him in a small box and left it until the morning to bury him in the garden. I did what I did for the guineas pigs when they died....I put some food with him for the afterlife! (Me and my pagan/Christian ways! - I made a cross too).

Now Ollie is alone and wondering where his friend is. We are trying to lavish love on him. It's not good to have lone rats, but Ollie has always been the biter and aggressive one. I am not sure what we do. I can't see him accepting another rat. Oh, and he bit me on Sunday. Blood everywhere and the bite was tricky to stop bleeding. It's getting better now, though. I should have known better than to stroke him in his cage. Once he's out he is much better, but we are always wary. We are teaching him to go inside the pouch so we can lift him out of the cage. My son is very good (though he's been bitten three times!). Oh, the trials and tribulations of pet keeping!

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Finally, I had a nice surprise yesterday when the Brotherton Poetry Prize Anthology arrived in the post. I'd not won the prize or been a runner up. In fact I'm not in it at all, though I did enter. Maybe it was part of the entry to receive a free copy when published. Whatever, it was good to have a copy and see what I was up against. I guess I can see why I got nowhere! I've only read a few poems so far but I really liked the poems by the overall winner, Dane Holt, especially the first few. I think I've finally realised that these winning poets are in another league to me. I'm not sure how I will ever get to that level, perhaps never.