Samantha Wynne Rhydderch

I am really enjoying the wit,humour and underlying sadness of the poems in her second collection Not in These shoes – my lucky find on Sunday. My favourite poem is Crayfish Tail Salsa – based I suspect on a real experience of working in a hotel and how exploited you can be as a young…

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Day Seven

I’ve been browsing the Blackbird website today – an on-line journal of literature and the arts which has lots of fine poetry to offer. Today’s poet is Katie Ford who has published two collections including Colosseum (Graywolf Press, 2008), which won the 2009 Levis Reading Prize. As well as her poems Blackbird includes a conversation…

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Day Six

While elder son was at his guitar lesson I discovered one of the charity shops in town was open (unusual for a Sunday) and spent a happy half hour browsing their books. Came away with Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch’s Not in These shoes. Worth buying just for the opening poem Decoupage.

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One Hundred Days

From 1st December I’ve committed myself to writing (or if no time to write) reading a poem every day for one hundred days. A day without any poetry in it is rather like a day without smiles. Today is Day five and I’ve just finished revising over twenty poems to send off for critique. The…

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Much Progress

After a hectic summer on the work and domestic front I’ve been managing to find time for poetry this month. Sent the next batch of poems to my mentor in North Wales earlier this week. I’ve have been working through the poems she has read so far polishing them and sending them out. Can’t wait…

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Small sucesses

It was good to have a poem appear last week on Ink, Sweat and Tears. There is nothing like seeing one of your poems ‘in print’ to give you a lift. According to my paypal account I seem to have won a small scale poetry competition organised by the Write Idea. We had to write…

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Lots of poems

The lack of blog posts have been because I’ve been busy writing. What better excuse. It has been good. I’ve had a couple of acceptances with poems due to appear on Everyday poets and Ink Sweat and tears.

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A Handful of Stones

One of my pieces has gone up today on ahandfulofstones This is Fiona Robyn’s lovely blog of small stones or moments of paying proper attention to everyday things.

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Alison Brackenbury

One of my favourite poets, Alison Brackenbury was on Radio 3 last night with an essay about John Clare. It included her wonderful poem – The Beanfields’ Scent. You have a week to catch it on the BBC player if you missed it. http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00fs4s2/The_Essay_Under_the_Influence_Episode_2/

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