Tag: sarah salway

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The positives of submitting less to magazines

I recently came across this blog post by Naush Sabah about why we send our poems to magazines (or not). I’m in agreement with her on just about all of it, although I needed telling some things; for example:

You needn’t seek to publish every poem you write. Some work is for the drawer, some work is for an audience of one or two friends, some work is better within a book, some work is for the trash and, if you’re lucky, a key to unlock the next piece of writing.

It hasn’t been a conscious thing, but when I think about it, I can put most poems I write these days into one of these categories. I haven’t been sending out as many poems to magazines as I used to, and among those I have sent not many have been accepted. I’ve been a bit disillusioned about this to be honest.

And yet at the same time I can see that quite a few of these poems belong with others in order to have the impact I’m after. In other words, in a collection.

A few might even be poems I should be treating as stepping stones to the actual poem I’m after, the ‘key to unlocking the next piece of writing’ that Naush talks about in her piece.

A funny thing to be saying, given my unofficial role as cheerleader for submitting to magazines. I still believe in the magazines, and still encourage people to send in their poems. But it’s what I’ve always said: it’s not a strategy that suits everyone all the time. Goals and ambitions change.

Which reminds me, Sarah Salway interviewed me recently about submitting to magazines, for her lovely Everyday Words project. Sarah is a powerhouse of creativity, and if you haven’t seen it before, do watch this excellent TED talk she gave in 2019, ‘In praise of everyday words’:

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Angst/

A reading, not much writing & feeling a bit humble

Poetry reading in Tunbridge Wells

Last Thursday I had the pleasure of taking part in a reading at Tunbridge Wells library, organised by the wonderful Abegail Morley and featuring also Jo Hemmant, Emer Gillespie and Margaret Beston. A lovely variety of poetry and styles, and a good size audience – there must have been more than thirty people there. Margaret runs a Tonbridge Stanza called Roundel and a number of the members came along in support. Also super to see Sarah Salway there.

The weekend prior to that I held a workshop day at my house for a few lovely poet friends. It was so interesting to hear what they were reading and working on, to talk about magazines & publishing, poets and writing. It did make me think of Jo Grigg, whose poetry days at her house had inspired me to do the same – she had planned to come to this one, but it wasn’t to be. Poetry can feel very solitary at times. I suppose that sounds like an obvious statement, but actually it only strikes me that way now and then. I haven’t written anything lately so maybe that’s why it’s feeling like one of those times.

Acceptance/rejection news: It served me right for writing a blog post with the title ‘Nice to end the week with an acceptance!’ – the god of humility struck me down fairly promptly with a rejection from Lighthouse magazine a day or two later. That, coupled with a ‘no thanks’ from Acumen the very next day after I submitted, put me back on terra firma. As result, I have a few poems needing homes, but I can’t seem to bring myself to send them anywhere just yet, although I should, otherwise I’m in danger of not having anything ‘out there’ when the next tranche of yays or nays comes in.

I still have stuff out with Ambit (who apparently have been snowed under since they started using Submittable – interesting!) and Poetry Review, plus a couple of pamphlet submissions, but that’s it at the moment. On the positive side, Morphrog (the online ‘extreme’ sister mag to the Frogmore Papers, and currently seeking submissions by the way) has graciously accepted a slightly mad poem for their January edition.

Inspiration/

Three featured blogs – writing and ‘X’

It’s funny how writing often goes together with a second passion or skill, and the ingenuity of bloggers in combining them in just one blog is often surprising and interesting. This week’s three featured blogs are to do with writing  & gardening, writing & swimming, and writing & animals.

OK so I’m not a great gardener. I used to love looking through my mum’s gardening magazines but mainly for the garden plans. Planning (on paper) was my thing. Nurturing living plants and learning their names has never worked for me. I don’t know what that makes me: a virtual gardener? However I’m very happy visiting or sitting in a lovely garden. More a garden reader than a writer.

But that’s not true of the first of this week’s bloggers.

Sarah Salway
Sarah Salway – writer and coach

Sarah Salway was the Canterbury Poet Laureate last year and is famous for her photographs of benches, among many other things! Living in Kent, the ‘garden of England’, she has an appropriate love of gardens. So much so that her recent project is Writer in the Garden, which she calls ‘an idiosyncratic literary tour around the gardens of England.’

Writer in the Garden
Writer in the Garden

Sarah’s enthusiasm and energy are wonderful and her adventures in gardens are clearly a strong creative inspiration.

The second ‘Writing and X’ blog is the simply named Writing and Swimming by someone calling herself rather coyly ‘Aquamarina’. Dear Acquamarina, I couldn’t find your real name anywhere on your blog, so if you want to make yourself known to me please leave a note in the comments, thanks!

Swimming & writing
Swimming & Writing

Aquamarina’s sidebar is a clever compilation of ‘Books featuring swimming’, ‘Films I like with a watery feel’ and even ‘3 swimming poems by Sharon Olds’. Clearly the blog’s author is a poet, and her watery writing-related posts are entertaining. (I was reminded of poet Clare Best‘s recent fundraising swimathon – maybe the swimming-poetry connection isn’t so unusual?)

Sheila Boneham is a prolific author “best known for her writing about dogs and cats for the past fifteen years”  as well as an experienced creative writing tutor. Her blog, Write here, write now, features guest posts, writing prompts, author interviews and all manner of musings and articles of interest to writers and/or animal lovers.

write here write now
Write here, write now

A quick search brought up some quirky blog posts, such as an article on photographing dogs and another about  New Year writing goals. My only quibble with Sheila’s blog is the navigation – most of the main menu links take you to her main website and away from the blog, and within the blog each time you click on a new post or search result a new window opens, so I ended up with rather a lot of tabs on my browser. But hey! That’s just the website pedant in me I suppose. I was interested enough in the content to keep clicking around, and that’s pretty important. Plus there were all those cute kitties.

if you’re interested in writing the odd guest blog post (great idea if you’re a writer looking to build your reach on the social web) then you may be interested in guesting on Sheila’s blog. Submission guidelines are here.