Mags & Blogs – Page 20 – Robin Houghton

Mags & Blogs/ 10/06/2012

Back

I haven’t posted here in a while, I actually took the blog ‘private’ for a few months, after a conversation with Catherine Smith about poets and blogging… she argued strongly for poets retaining a certain mystique and not baring their souls to all and sundry (or their weekly shop, or what they thought of the Jubilee etc).

So, being somewhat underexposed as a poet so far, I thought perhaps I’d go into hiding. But I don’t know. The exhibitionist in me wants out. And I haven’t published anything here terribly revelatory. Plus I’m careful not to post any poems that haven’t already been published. So I’m back. I’m also hard at work nurturing my Blogging for Creatives blog, so that’s got be back my blog mojo.

Who knows, if I make it interesting rather than completely random, someone may even get some entertainment from it. See you soon!

Mags & Blogs/ 06/04/2012

When my sister is old

I will wait at the door with flowers
if she greets me at all it will be brief
and cold as the Guildford house
where the stairs stayed uncarpeted
and the kitchen unmodernised,
names and numbers taped on walls,
coats and boots crammed under stairs.

Her back will be bent like our mother’s,
she will start in the middle of a sentence
half scolding, half pleased, tired of TV
and itching to get out walking with sticks
she will bring up that time on the Isle of Wight
when my legs gave way and she carried on,
fitter than me and needing to travel.

We will have tea and talk about church
or someone’s baby, there will never be
enough hours for all she must do or has done.
I will tease out family secrets and remind her
of twenty years she thought she’d never have,
if she comments at all it will be brief,
like the moment before sleep.

(from Agenda – web supplement to ‘Retrospectives’ issue April 2012)

Mags & Blogs/ 04/03/2012

Invasion

It took three rows of barbed wire coiled round stakes,
hammered at angles into sand and shingle. The beach
packed and leaking like keddle nets of cockles in green
buckets, for six summers.

Wading off in gumboots, baitdiggers beyond the rocks
held occasional wakes, observed by boys belly-down
in the dunes with binoculars, swapping quiet jokes
and stale crackers.

Over on the mud flats lugworms blew their coiled casts
as shellfish slept peacefully, and tides took time to warp
the weed-wrapped posts, as crippled as the knees
of sentries denied their leave.

After the war, low-slung homes stood watch: black-eyed,
slammed cold up against marram grass and buckthorn,
demanding their sea defences. Then came Pontins
and the caravans.

published in Interpreter’s House, February 2012

Mags & Blogs/ 17/01/2012

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!

Mags & Blogs/ 03/12/2011