Category: Writing

Angst/

Writing again after a setback

Polite

A few weeks ago I was feeling a bit ‘stuck’ and decided to pay for another ‘Poetry Prescription’ from the Poetry Society. I got the feedback last week and it was less than motivating. Basically my work got sent to the same poet who looked at it last time (I did a ‘PP’ back in 2008 prior to starting to read and write poetry more seriously). He or she was fairly underwhelmed the first time, and gleefully told me in his or her report that he or she remembered having done so.

Sorry about the he/she malarky – I’m not allowed to know who the poet was who laid into my work, ‘to protect their privacy’ – never mind my privacy!

As I explained to Paul McGrane, I’m happy to take criticism of individual poems (which is the point of the exercise) but would rather have had a fresh eye look over the work. This person seems to have made up their mind before even reading the four poems I submitted (based on their prior opinion) and went out of his or her way to make me feel small and useless.

Is this the way the Poetry Society motivates new writers? What a shame. But thanks to the encouragement/wise words of two or three supportive poet friends I won’t let it set me back. OK, I know a lot of what I’ve written isn’t great, but there is some good stuff in there, and I just need to write more of it. Plus, in poetry there are many opinions and this particular critic may never be a fan of mine no matter what I write.

So I’m back writing again, with a few good kernels of poems on the go. Onwards!

Mags & Blogs/

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!

 

 

Angst/

The key to writing better poetry is …

Saw a tweet about the new Arvon course list for 2012 being up. So couldn’t resist taking a look.

I’m going through this thing at the moment where I feel a desperate need for some sort of mentoring, or at least workshopping, with better poets than myself. Better writers, more experienced… I guess I don’t necessarily define ‘better’ in terms of recognition or success, but of course that’s part of it.

But it’s funny, sometimes, when I meet someone in a poetry setting, I get an immediate feeling that they’re ‘good’ – it’s hard to describe really, but I get a little ‘ping’, a lightbulb moment I suppose.

I can think of three people who’ve given me this feeling in the last few years. But I’m too shy to name them right now 🙂 The point is, they’re not all obvious candidates for the ‘lightbulb moment’. And I’ve come across many others who you’d think would qualify, but don’t.

It’s probably nothing to do with poetry wisdom or anything. Just a spark, a perceived (and possible one-sided) rapport.

Anyway, the Arvon courses that jumped out at me were a week on ‘Advanced Poetry’ with Carol Ann Duffy (quality-controlled entry, which I like) – but it’s a) in Scotland and b) overlapping with family holiday (already booked) …. a week in Devon with Mimi Khalvati and Sean O’Brien (I think… if I remember that correctly) – I haven’t yet been able to infiltrate the Lewes Live Lit monthly workshops with Mimi Khalvati, something that frustrates me NO END – and the idea of travelling to darkest Devon JUST to get into a workshop with her, when I can’t do so in my HOME TOWN, seems deliciously perverse.

And then there’s the possibility of a week with Don Paterson, albeit a ‘fiction and poetry’ week, when fiction interests me not one iota…. but Don Paterson? Oh my. Don. Paterson.

So I probably won’t be shelling out my £650 this year to the Arvon Foundation. And anyway, all these courses…. they’re a business, right? Just how many courses have the successful poets actually been on, at least, those who’ve been plying their trade since before the MA Creative Writing boom?

Isn’t writing better poetry down to reading good poetry, attempting to write stuff that’s as good, and practising again and again?