I’ve been busy with work stuff lately so just a quick update. I had another rejection from The Poetry Review (but a nice note from Maurice Riordan) and I’m still awaiting news on half a dozen magazines I have poems out to. After umming and ahhing about submitting my short pamphlet to Templar Iota Shots IRead more ⟶
Category: Competitions
Pre half-term round-up: submissions, events, other writing
October is my favourite month, partly because it’s the start of the run-up to Christmas with all sorts of musical things to come, before then of course Bonfire Night in Lewes – always an annual high point. Plus I have a birthday, and it’s generally a time for a stock-take and a bit of ‘whereRead more ⟶
National Poetry Competition awards last night
6.30pm on Thursday evening, and I receive an email invitation to the National Poetry Competition and Ted Hughes Award prizegiving evening at the Savile Club in the swanky area of London that is Mayfair, taking place 24 hours later. Quick calculation: do I go? What can I wear? What if no-one speaks to me? CanRead more ⟶
So bad they rejected it twice
Just raising my head above the parapet to report that I’m about 20k words into my book and now at the point where I have to start printing pages off and going through everything with post-its, before I lose my many threads. It’s amazing how I can be convinced I’ve already covered something, or filedRead more ⟶
And the winner is …?
We huddled, we looked out for friends or people we knew, we stood around holding our tiny £5 plastic glasses of wine. But mostly we sat and listened, as Ian McMillan instructed us, but with very little murmuring or whooping, as the T S Eliot Prize nominated poets in turn did the long walk toRead more ⟶
Workshop report – the T S Eliot Prize shortlisted collections
Tonight it’s that lovely annual poets’ jamboree, the T S Eliot Prize readings at the Royal Festival Hall. This year I thought it would increase my enjoyment of the readings if I had an inkling about all of them beforehand, so yesterday I was at the Poetry School in Lambeth getting educated. Ten poets, tenRead more ⟶
Submissions, projects, ‘poetry corner’
Sorry for the silence lately, I’ve been under the weather and only today feeling a tad more human. Then there’s been all the Christmas stuff, you know what it’s like. Anyway, here’s a quick update for now: No news yet from Ambit or Poetry Review, but I did make a submission to The London Magazine,Read more ⟶
Links to useful poetry resources (publishers, magazines, competitions etc)
I thought I’d post some links to poetry resources I’ve been bookmarking. I’m sure these are just the tip of the iceberg so if you know of anything similar to add to this list please let me know in a comment – thanks. These are mostly UK but I’ve included one good US resource also.Read more ⟶
From first draft to publication
Something of an experiment today. I love seeing those handwritten drafts of famous poems, with the crossings out and alterations, such as this version of Wilfred Owen’s ‘Dulce et Decorum est’ at the British Library. I think it’s fascinating to see how people work on poems, and in workshops I often wonder how a particularRead more ⟶
Nice to end the week with an acceptance
Although I was delighted to hear that Antiphon is taking a poem of mine for the next issue, for a moment I had a panic because it’s a piece I’ve altered drastically since, and I was thinking of sending it into the National in its new form (but same title). As it happened, I was soRead more ⟶