National Poetry Month is fast approaching and Kelli Russell Agodon has come up with a great way to celebrate – participating bloggers will give away two books — the first can be your own and the second a favourite book by another author. If you would like to know more on how to participate click…
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Slipstream Poets
I’m highly commended in the Slipstream Competition
Day Twenty – snow
The Christmas holidays have begun with snow for us – a rare treat. Snow The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window wasSpawning snow and pink roses against itSoundlessly collateral and incompatible:World is suddener than we fancy it. World is crazier and more of it than we think,Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portionA tangerine…
Day Seventeen – Kingfisher
Despite the bitter cold here in the East of England (snow is forecast) I made msyelf go out for a walk/escape from the office at lunchtime. Worth braving the cold as down by the river Ouzel I came very close to kingfisher on one of the pollarded willows by the water’s edge. You only ever…
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…
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…
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.
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…
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…
Slow Trains Literary Journal
Two of my poems Reading Mayakovsky and Transient have recently appeared on Slow Trains. They are rather wintry for July.