My recent poetry unsuccesses

True to my pledge to blog the UNsuccesses as well as the successes, here’s the latest news.

Firstly Magma – I’ve submitted there a couple of times previously and on both occasions was rejected pretty quickly. This sets a precendent – you assume that if you don’t hear quickly, that your poem is likely to have been shortlisted. However, with different editors for each issue, I guess they all have their different methods. In this case, decisions were sent out relatively late, and several of us who had been on tenterhooks all learned more or less at the same time that it was a ‘thanks but no thanks.’

Anyway, I haven’t held it against them (how could I? when it’s their loss!!) and have now subscribed to Magma, as it does look like an interesting and wide-ranging magazine. This subscription will be at the expense of Aesthetica, which I subscribed to for a year but realised that although it was intriguing for its coverage of art, it doesn’t actually feature poetry any more.

Which brings me to my next unsuccess, which came in the form of a standard rejection from PN Review. This wasn’t so much of a surprise, as PN Review is a very high brow mag indeed, and its rejection of my work only increases both my admiration of it and my determination to one day produce something worthy of its pages.

I’m now trying to decide whether to subscribe to PN Review, both as part of my general poetry education and in an attempt to mold something they would like. If I do, it has to be a straight swap with my Mslexia subscription, but that doesn’t expire until next summer. I feel like I’ve kind of moved on from Mslexia. Although I still enjoy browsing the directory of courses & competitions and dreaming about going on a writing retreat in Italy, I get frustrated at how little serious coverage is given to poetry. Plus, recent articles about social media and blogging have annoyed me in their simplification of the issues and regurgitation of same old advice. Not exactly cutting edge.

So there we are – I still have a few things out for consideration here and there, and I’ll let you know what happens. But for now I try to do what Kipling urged – to ‘meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two impostors just the same” – he he.