Every now and then, poet friend Jo generously offers up her lovely, sunny top floor for a few of us to have a poetry day. On Saturday there were four of us, the smallest group we’ve had so far, but it was lovely – we all brought along whatever we are reading at the moment,Read more ⟶
Month: October 2012
It’s my birthday! Hurrah! I think
Children love having birthdays. I quite enjoyed them myself until I got to about 30, then I went through a period of getting a bit grumpy about the whole birthday thing. But these days I don’t mind them at all. So far today: Woke up with migraine that had been brewing up all night –Read more ⟶
Would you pay to submit your poetry to a magazine? (Poll)
Here’s a thing. Poetry presses and magazines exist on a shoestring. Sometimes half a shoestring. I’m sure we’d all love to support them by subscribing to them all, but it does get a tad expensive. So what’s the answer? Charging for submissions seems relatively unusual in this country but it’s not in the US. TheRead more ⟶
More Mimi tips
Here’s my round up of tips from Mimi Khalvati as recorded in my notebook on Saturday…. yours to do with as you see fit! On the subject of clarity and coherence (does one need it? should one worry about it?) Similes are clearer than metaphors, if that’s what you’re aiming for. Mimi’s advice is toRead more ⟶
Power pose through that next workshop!
Saturday was our monthly workshop with Mimi Khalvati (tips to come in next post!) I had some really useful feedback from everyone on the poem I took along, but still managed to leave feeling defeated. Why? Because the quality of my observations on other people’s work just seemed completely off. There’s no chance to backtrackRead more ⟶
Tips from Don Paterson
The Mimi Khalvati workshop notes I posted here recently went down well, so I thought I’d share with you some gems from Don Paterson. Don came down to Sussex for the Pighog Poetry Festival in 2010, and as a tea-making volunteer I was lucky enough to sit in on his masterclass. (Actually that sounds veryRead more ⟶
How’s your filing? And what’s in a (folder) name?
Here’s a pressing question – what sort of filing system do you favour? I love my lever arch files, with their colour-coded dividers and lovingly decided section names. But if you leave the filing for a while the ‘unclassified’ section at the front becomes unwieldy, and it’s impossible to find anything. But (for me) atRead more ⟶
Robert Hamberger’s ‘Being the Sea’ (video post)
You can read this poem in Agenda Vol 46 number 3, ‘Retrospectives’.
Readings, launches, and the Carmen Rollers
Lots of excitement in the past week. First of all, National Poetry Day and the launch of the Frogmore Press anthology Poems from the Old Hill on Thursday evening. It was standing room only as we’d all brought family and friends to cheer us on. It was fab to see some of my non-poetRead more ⟶
Snail mail
Just when you thought it was safe to post that letter…