The funny side of food

Waitrose is running a Year of Poetry and wants your poems all about food. But you will have to be quick because the deadline is noon Wednesday 15th May. Waitrose Weekend newspaper has a front page article about the competition as well as an article on page six featuring Roger McGough who will judge the competition. There are some lovely examples of food poetry too! Roger will pick six winners from the months May, June, July and August and these will displayed in stores and from those a top three will be picked and announced on 2nd October which is National Poetry Day.

So get your brain around a turnip or an apple and write your thoughtful and witty poem (no longer than eight lines) and get your entries in.

Ending the year on a high

Well, it's nice to end the year on a high - I've just heard that I am runner up in a local libraries poetry competition.  There is to a presentation in January when they would like me to read my poem. My prize is £30 worth of book tokens (YES!).

I've never read in front of an audience before but have decided to leave worrying about it until after Christmas.  I'm still trying to take it all in.

Made it!

At the last minute I wacked off an entry to Magma for their poems between 11-80 lines.  I'd been searching for one for the up to 10 lines but the only decent one I had is in the OU Poets Workbook waiting to see if it gets enough votes for the anthology (I have others waiting on the same thing but only one poem by each member can go in).  I decided not to risk this as if it was voted in I'd have the embarrassment of withdrawing it from Magma.  So I had to find a longer poem.  When I'd done all the online stuff I panicked because I'd been too quick about it and not checked how many lines I'd got and for a moment I thought I'd entered the wrong competition!  Checking back I was relieved to find all was well.  I should not do these things when I'm under pressure and I'm also supposed to be cooking an evening meal and the natives are champing at the bit.  Will I learn?  Probably not!

Words in flight!

Well, it's done - I have sent off a collection of 14 poems to iOTA Shots competition. My words have flown, my poetry in flight across the internet!  Having left the poems for a while I was able to re-edit some but even as I was going through them a final time I felt that I have no chance.  Some of the poems I think are really good, others are 'nice' but are they really good enough?  If nothing else this has been good practice in that I had to select poems within a theme (as that was what I had chosen to do), really look at them, re-edit if necessary and choose an order for them.

I won't know until February whether my collection has been chosen which means those poems are now out of bounds for sending anywhere else until then.  That leaves me with only a few poems now to use and few to still work on.  Hopefully I will get back to writing soon.  Poetry has taken a back seat recently as other things in life have been occupying me but I am attending a poetry workshop later this month and with any luck I will have lots of poems to work with.

Entries are in!

Just entered the Nature Poetry Competition run by The RSPB and The Rialto magazine.  Been agonising over the three poems I wanted to submit, well one in particular, but have done a re-edit on it and feel much happier with it.  It's in the lap of the gods now, or rather the judges, one of whom is Sir Andrew Motion.

Magma Poetry Competition

Magma will be launching a new poetry competition in October to be judged by TS Eliot prizewinner George Szirtes.  Entries can be submitted from 16th October. Visit Magma's website for more information (additional link on side bar).