Month: November 2020

Angst/

– and + and so it goes

A teeny bit of a moan

How’s things with you? Well, I hope. During the first lockdown I was happy to enjoy the garden and revel in the novelty of it all. I trusted (more or less) what we were being told. I admit I’m feeling a bit ground down by it all now.

I’ve just deleted an entire paragraph I wrote here, as I deemed it too negative. All the planning and hoping is what keeps me going I think, but it feels exhausting trying to stay glass-half-full while under what feels like the constant attack of glass-half-empty people. I don’t want to add to the negativity with my own angst, so let’s move on.

So now the positive

My booklet on getting published in UK poetry mags is selling even better than the first edition – wowsers! And THANK YOU for buying it, telling your friends/students/social media contacts all about it.

Planet Poetry, the podcast I co-host with Peter Kenny, is generating some lovely comments. Thank you for that too! Working with Peter on the podcast has been one of the things keeping me positive.

There’s so much I’m enjoying about the course I’m doing, not least of all how it’s opening my eyes to so much great poetry and ideas about poetry that I’d never have encountered otherwise. My bookshelf is bulging. There’s enough reading there to keep me going for the rest of my life, I think.

We’re still planning on having a scaled-down Lewes Singers Christmas concert: venues and singers booked, music distributed. It’ll be intimate. But OH HOW MUCH Nick and I want it to happen, even if we’re only singing to ourselves and a handful of friends and family.

Right, I’m off to a Zoom seminar on the poetics of Don Paterson and Ben Lerner (whose novel 10:04 I absolutely loved.)

Have a good weekend, and here’s to the free life that we took so much for granted. May it return.

Blog/

So no fireworks this week then? Hmmm

What a week. That election (can’t bring myself to watch). Another lockdown starts. Planet Poetry Episode 2 coming up. And I’ve just turned 60.

Planet Poetry

Peter Kenny and I were thrilled and touched by the feedback on our podcast first episode. Episode 2 goes live on Thursday, when I’m interviewing Clare Shaw (yeah, baby!) and Peter meets editor of Channel magazine Elizabeth Murtough.

Meanwhile we’re having an editorial meetup tomorrow in Lewes, the day before what would have been Bonfire Night but is now the day before lockdown. The Bonfire Boys and Girls have been told by their societies not to congregate or let off any ‘rookies’, but I can imagine the pubs will still be a tad busy. What are we thinking of? It should make a colourful recording.

Search for Planet Poetry wherever you subscribe to podcasts, or you can listen to episodes here after they are live.

The York MA

I’ve handed in my first assignment! Not that it carries any marks, it’s just a chance for them to make sure we can put one word in front of another, know how NOT to plagiarise and NOT to being a sentence with ‘and’. And I hope I’ve passed.

Whether I’ll make it to another ‘face to face’ seminar this term is anyone’s guess, but it’s looking unlikely. Ah well. More zooming.

Submissions, writing etc

Bad news! I’ve nothing out to mags at the moment. But I do have a dozen or so poems that have been rejected numerous times this year, so I ought to go back to them really, but I’m enjoying reading and writing about real poets at the moment, too much really, to bear looking at my own attempts, but that’s OK. It’ll happen.

Actually I had a poem in The Frogmore Papers recently, and I’ve two poems forthcoming in Prole next month I think, all of which I’m very grateful for, so I shouldn’t be moaning anyway.

The updated ‘Guide’

It’s out! My updated version of ‘A Guide to Getting Published in UK Poetry Magazines’ is here and I’ve sent out the pre-orders. Can I tempt you to a copy? Or someone you know? What else are we doing to do during lockdown except write and send out our poems? It’s a mere £6 including UK postage (£1 extra to send to the EU and £2 extra to North America).

Comps news

No, I’m not reneging on my vow to NOT enter single-poem comps this year. I did waver a bit when it came to the National Poetry Comp deadline, but as someone said on Twitter, having made the long list last year I rather feel lightning won’t strike twice (unless you’re Ian Duhig of course, who actually WON it twice). But that shouldn’t stop you, of course! I’ve been asked to promote the Cafe Writers Competition which closes 30th November (1st prize £1,000) and there are a plethora of magazines with their windows wide open this month, but more about that in a forthcoming post.