As part of my autumn poetry reactivation plan (sounds good, eh?) I’ve signed up for an online course from the Poetry’s School with Karen McCarthy Woolf. It’s a feedback course for the ‘general improvement of left-for-dead poems in need of resuscitation’. This premise really appealed to me – having quite a few poems languishing atRead more ⟶
Category: Writing
On persistence, or, another submissions stock-take
Being back early from our hols due to N spraining his ankle, I found I had a day ‘in hand’ and was strangely at a loss. Until I remembered I’d been waiting for such an opportunity (ie an unallocated day) to sit down and open the ‘poetry’ folder on my computer. I find it hard toRead more ⟶
Guest Post: “A Self-Publishing Blueprint” by Bud Smith
Another brilliantly useful blog post by Bud Smith – a straight-talking piece about self-publishing. Although his example isn’t a book of poetry, most of the advice is still relevant. Warning: there’s a bit of ‘language’ in here, if you’re offended by that sort of thing :0
Glitter Bomb by Aaron Belz
Nice review here of a collection I think I want! Even the title and cover speak to me…
More words of advice from Mimi Khalvati
Having recently been to the last of Mimi Khalvati’s Lewes for workshops for a while, I realised I hadn’t been blogging about them as I used to. It was also time to clean out my ‘workshop notes’ folder, so here are a few more things I’ve jotted down from time to time – I hopeRead more ⟶
Granta Japan launch
A fascinating evening yesterday in Brighton at New Writing South for the launch of the latest issue of Granta magazine issue 127, Japan, published simultaneously in English and Japanese. Two of the contributors, Yukiko Motoya and Hiromi Kawakami, read extracts of their work in Japanese, and their translators then read the same passages in English.Read more ⟶
Latest on the book, the pamphlet and more projects
I don’t suppose you’ve noticed, but I’ve been a bit quiet on here the last week or so – not for any reason other than work though. I’ve fully recovered from the mini workshop trauma of a couple of weeks ago (I typed that as one word, workshoptrauma, which made me wonder momentarily if that’sRead more ⟶
On blogging, writing and giving myself time
Yesterday was the first session of a ‘Build your social web presence’ course I’m teaching at New Writing South, and the common question of how does one find the time to blog came up. Fellow bloggers, how would you answer this? Do you set time aside to blog, or just fit it in when youRead more ⟶
Bit of a regroup after a challenging workshop
Ever had a bad day at the poetry workshop coalface? I think I had one yesterday. Here’s what happened and what came from it. Firstly, I made some mistakes. I haven’t been reading or writing much poetry the last few weeks, as I’ve been consumed with work, research and a very different kind of writing. TiredRead 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 ⟶