Tag: 14 magazine

Angst/

Season of mists and new starts

Autumn creeping up, and with it, as always, changes.

I’m upset about the Queen’s death, more perhaps than I thought I would be. It may be something to do with delayed (or reignited) mourning for my sister, or my parents. But it’s also something I’ve been worried about for a while – it’s like a final thread has broken, a single consistent as (it feels to me) politics and society is disintegrating. I didn’t hear or see Huw Edwards say ‘She has left us’, but I can’t even think about it without welling up (as I am now). I can’t see any logic to feeling this way; I never met the Queen, I’m not a rampant royalist and the death of Diana left me cold. I just feel the final life raft has been pulled away.

Anyway, this wasn’t supposed to be another funereal post. Believe it or not I have a lot of good things happening at the moment… first of all, I’ve decided to go back to York and finish my Poetry & Poetics MA. The new modules on offer look enticing. Face-to-face teaching is back. And I think now I know what to expect I shall be less demanding of myself and just enjoy it (which was the original idea!) The only possible issue might be the travel, as trains can’t be relied on any more. We’ll see.

New start number two: work on Planet Poetry season 3 is well underway! Interviews are being recorded & edited already and although Peter is in the middle of a complex house move, we are on schedule to kick off in about a month’s time. I can’t as yet reveal who our Season Opener will be (as I don’t actually know!)  but it’ll be a goodie.

Meanwhile, I’m looking forward to reading alongside a plethora of fabulous poetry friends at The Frogmore Papers 100th issue launch in a couple of weeks! Also very pleased to have new work forthcoming this month in 14 Magazine and in Prole.

Blog/

Oh hello! Quick catch up

What was I doing all last month? Mostly singing (I passed my Grade 8 with merit – hurrah!), the odd party (friends with birthdays and/or launches), gardening (what was possible with the scaffolding up), executor stuff for my sister, making jam & chutney from all the rhubarb, and seeing an old friend from my adidas/Nike days who was over from the States and came to see me for a day. So a LOT of excitement. As regards poetry:

A few disappointments – the usual rejections, also my collection is somewhat in mothballs at the moment for various reasons, and may not see the light of day after all. But I’m oddly upbeat about it. I feel I’ve kind of moved on and am working on new strands. I’m bad at feeling pleased about poems for very long, they go stale on me and I just can’t bring myself to stick by them. This happens even if a poem is published somewhere – in fact especially so. I hope this is normal. Anyway, I’m sure at least some of the poems will find their way into a pamphlet or collection at some point.

On the positive side – I’ve re-joined the Poetry Book Society. I didn’t renew for several years, for various reasons. I still don’t really like the magazine they send out, and the ‘selection’ process, with different selectors every season or so, does seem to mean a lot of the same poets popping up on a regular basis. However, I do need to widen my reading in a more systematic way. It feeds into my writing but also into the podcast. We’re just coming up to our Season 2 finale, in which I interview Fiona Sampson. Fiona got me thinking about many things, for example I was inspired by the way she spoke about her tenure as editor of Poetry Review. So I’m already fired up about Season 3 of Planet Poetry.

Also positive – Richard Skinner has taken a poem of mine for the next issue of 14, a welcome acceptance email after a tranche of NOs (thank you, thank you!) Plus I have a poem out in the latest edition of Prole, and in the Autumn I’ve a poem in the 100th edition of The Frogmore Papers.

And of course I’m still plugging away at the list of poetry magazines and their submissions windows. The big quarterly update was last month, and I also send out end of the month reminders. I’ve got a good list of subscribers and people are very appreciative. So now I’m thinking about what else I can offer. Watch this space.