Mags & Blogs/

The ups and downs of poetry submissions

Last week: issue 48 of The North failed to arrive, and when I asked for my ‘contributor’s copy’ I was told…erm… you’re not a contributor.

The poem they’d asked for back in July 2011 had gone astray, and never made it into the issue. Boo! And now the next issue isn’t until October. Boo! But at least they’ve offered to include it then. Yay!

Then yesterday I get an abrupt email telling me my subscription to The North has been cancelled. When I called to ask why, I was told my credit card needed updating. So they cancelled my subs. Did I want to renew? Uh, I don’t think so, as there’s only going to be one issue this year, in October, and for that I’m going to receive a contributor’s copy. I think.

And today: email from new webzine Antiphon saying thanks but no thanks – Boo!

An hour later, email from Mslexia saying my poem’s been selected for issue 53 in the ‘New Writing’ section – Yay!

Books/

T S Eliot prize winner

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We saw him read on Sunday evening, alongside the other shortlisted poets. He was great, my money was on either him or Carol Ann Duffy to win (although I confess the only collection I’d read of the shortlisted ones was this…)

 

Mags & Blogs/

River Ouse, Rodmell, 1941

The first she prises out, clenched in bindweed:
reluctance adds to its appeal.

And there: not so large as to burst pockets,
several flints conspire

their surfaces glass-perfect, all the better
to slip in without fuss.

From mud, she frees a stump of the fat chalk Down
walked each day, as worn

as the worsted that parcels up her reedy body
ready for anchoring.

Pebbles lean into her, take us they say, take us,
the floods are coming

but like Noah she must leave some behind,
the unbelievers.

 

(first published in Agenda Vol 46 No. 2, Sept 2011)

Uncategorized/

Autumn cold

I’m fighting with a cold at the moment, stuffed up sinuses, the lot. Having spent 14 hours in bed I thought I ought to get up and do some more prep for a blogging workshop I’m due to lead tomorrow. That was 5 hours ago – I got a bit waylaid on poetry. Magma have a competition on at the moment with a short poems category, so I’m working on two shorties. I’m pretty ambivalent about poetry comps – entering one seems a little like blogging – you’ve no idea if ANYONE is going to like it, see it or even read it (do the judges really read all 5,000 or whatever entries?) so you just have to do it for your own satisfaction. Or live in hope. Sometimes I look at the winning entries in past comps and I can’t always see why they won. (But then again, I didn’t read the other 4,985.)