Chewing the cud & going off-piste

A small window has opened up between sinus headaches for me to write an overdue blog post… the cold-y sinus-y stuff prevented me from going to Hastings Stanza last week (BOO), but I still have plenty of positive things to report so please don’t leave yet…

The Planet Poetry podcast has kept my busy lately, I think Peter and I have settled into a relaxed schedule whereby we try to produce a new episode every three weeks but if life gets in the way then four is no biggie. It’s very satisfying to research possible new guests, read their work and prepare questions we want to ask them. Then there’s the editing and then recording all the other segments of the ‘show’ in which Peter and I chew the cud and usually go a bit off-piste (interesting mix of metaphors there, are we Tyrolean cows?) If you’re a listener, thank you! We’re certainly chuffed with the quality of guests we’ve managed to ‘bag’. Last week it was J O Morgan. Apart from numbers of downloads, there’s not really any way of measuring the pod’s ‘success’ or otherwise. Ideally we’d like to get mentioned on the BBC Radio Podcast Hour, so if you have any contacts there, let me know.

I’m at a slight hiatus as regards writing. I’ve stopped fiddling with the ‘collection’ poems for now, having had some very useful feedback. Now I need/want to move onto new material. I’m doing a fair bit of background reading at the moment. The other day I was deep into an article about lighting and ventilation in British offices from 1950 to 1985. I know! But it’s actually very interesting. Then there’s the book on Roman Britain. What on earth is on the boil here? We’ll just have to wait and see. I have booked myself onto a untutored week at the Garsdale Retreat in September, during which I want to be planning and writing for the next book.

As for submissions, two poems are still out (since December 2021) to a magazine that said they were ‘still under consideration’ in March. Do I give up now? I’ve also got a few poems out to comps, and had a poem accepted by Prole. It’s a pleasure to have work in Prole – I always enjoy reading the magazine, plus I’m a big admirer of their attitude/ethics – open, fair, considerate, good communication, hard working. And yet there’s nothing po-faced or pretentious about the mag. Hurray!