Submissions: this week’s yays and nays

Oh OK I might as well admit it – there are no new YAYs to report. But issue 62 of ‘Obsessed with Pipework’ arrived, including my poem ‘Calamity’ which just crept in at the back. It’s a bit of a weird one (the poem that is) and I’m grateful that Charles Johnson at ‘Obsessed’ hasRead more ⟶

Exploring new territory, one poet at a time

I’m a big fan of Dan Blank, founder of We Grow Media. Dan’s mission is to help writers build their online platform, not by blasting out marketing messages from twitter or facebook, but by growing your audience ‘one reader at a time.’ I was thinking of this maxim recently when I was contemplating American poetry.Read more ⟶

An acceptance, a talk and workshop news

I haven’t had a poem accepted for a while so it was very nice to hear from Jeremy Page at The Frogmore Papers to say he’d like to take one for issue 82 in the autumn. Hurrah! (I also had some other good news last week but more about that shortly.) And now I’d likeRead more ⟶

Writers and the fear of social media

When talking to writers I meet at workshops and readings, the question of what I do for a living sometimes gets asked. And no sooner do words like ‘internet’, ‘social media’, ‘communications’ etc start popping out than I get stories about how the kids spend all their time on Facebook or their mobile phones, orRead more ⟶