A reading, not much writing & feeling a bit humble

Last Thursday I had the pleasure of taking part in a reading at Tunbridge Wells library, organised by the wonderful Abegail Morley and featuring also Jo Hemmant, Emer Gillespie and Margaret Beston. A lovely variety of poetry and styles, and a good size audience – there must have been more than thirty people there. Margaret runs a Tonbridge Stanza called Roundel and a number of the members came along in support. Also super to see Sarah Salway there.

The weekend prior to that I held a workshop day at my house for a few lovely poet friends. It was so interesting to hear what they were reading and working on, to talk about magazines & publishing, poets and writing. It did make me think of Jo Grigg, whose poetry days at her house had inspired me to do the same – she had planned to come to this one, but it wasn’t to be. Poetry can feel very solitary at times. I suppose that sounds like an obvious statement, but actually it only strikes me that way now and then. I haven’t written anything lately so maybe that’s why it’s feeling like one of those times.

Acceptance/rejection news: It served me right for writing a blog post with the title ‘Nice to end the week with an acceptance!’ – the god of humility struck me down fairly promptly with a rejection from Lighthouse magazine a day or two later. That, coupled with a ‘no thanks’ from Acumen the very next day after I submitted, put me back on terra firma. As result, I have a few poems needing homes, but I can’t seem to bring myself to send them anywhere just yet, although I should, otherwise I’m in danger of not having anything ‘out there’ when the next tranche of yays or nays comes in.

I still have stuff out with Ambit (who apparently have been snowed under since they started using Submittable – interesting!) and Poetry Review, plus a couple of pamphlet submissions, but that’s it at the moment. On the positive side, Morphrog (the online ‘extreme’ sister mag to the Frogmore Papers, and currently seeking submissions by the way) has graciously accepted a slightly mad poem for their January edition.