Judith Cair launched her debut pamphlet ‘The Ship’s Eye’ on Thursday evening in Brighton and the event was a sell-out, or rather a sell-over, as about a dozen people had to stand the whole evening. (Great for publisher/event organiser Pighog in a way. But I know from experience that packed events usually mean the nextRead more ⟶
Month: March 2013
A good point well made …
New poem on Ink, Sweat & Tears
Very nice of Helen Ivory to take ‘Left’, for Ink, Sweat & Tears. It’s the closest thing to a love poem I’ve written, I think. Whether it was appreciated as such (by the person it’s about) it’s hard to say! It’s a poem I workshopped at our regular Mimi Khalvati group here in Lewes. I seemRead more ⟶
Notes from a workshop
Last week I was lacking inspiration, part due to work commitments and then a 3-day headache – ugh – so it was a pleasure to once more find myself in the interesting ambience of the Lewes Bus Station building for another workshop with Mimi Khalvati and the group of serious poets I seem to haveRead more ⟶
‘Poem a day’ update, 40 days in
It’s two weeks since my last ‘poem a day’ update, and I must confess I feel like I’ve run out of steam. The last week or so has been particularly dispiriting. But I’ll keep trying up until Easter. I should have 40 poems by now, but I’ve fallen a bit short of that. I supposeRead more ⟶
From the Poetry Archive: Thom Gunn
I’m having a very self-indulgent morning. I was hoping to listen to an episode or two of ‘Poetry Please‘ but for some reason all the episodes from 2012 -2013 listed at the BBC iplayer site are ‘not currently available’. So then I moved onto the Poetry Archive for inspiration. I’m sorry to say I wasRead more ⟶
Getting the pamphlet in order
Although I did enter the Mslexia pamphlet competition last year I did feel a bit like I was scraping the barrel for poems. But now I’m confident I’ve got a decent number to choose from. I went through them this afternoon and started looking more closely at them to see if there are any naturalRead more ⟶
Super excited
… to actually make it onto a prizewinners list (The New Writer Poetry Prize 2012). The poem in question was one that had been through eight drafts over several months, and I’d workshopped it with two different groups. The content and form changed considerably as I yo-yo-ed back and forth. I’m quite keen to doRead more ⟶
An acceptance, a talk and workshop news
I haven’t had a poem accepted for a while so it was very nice to hear from Jeremy Page at The Frogmore Papers to say he’d like to take one for issue 82 in the autumn. Hurrah! (I also had some other good news last week but more about that shortly.) And now I’d likeRead more ⟶
Every Stanza meeting is different
I turned up to yesterday’s Brighton Poetry Stanza meeting with pretty much a clean sheet regarding how we’d spend the time. Although it was scheduled as a poetry reading and/or workshopping group, everyone was actually wanting to workshop their own poems. So pretty straightforward, and virtually no facilitation required from me at all. Except itRead more ⟶