Category Archives: poetry

The Cheaper Man

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Robert Bridges – a pointless Pointless answer. Nice beard, shame about the poetry.

I spent a strange night, in which I participated in an Australian reality TV show (which proved very disappointing and badly organised). I then went home, where I appeared to live in a version of our current bungalow, but in a network of cupboards instead of rooms, hiding from visitors. I do try to hide from visitors as much as possible, as I’m not very sociable and most of them want money, but I don’t live in cupboards. The walls in modern houses are not wide enough to accommodate passageways and cupboards anyway, so it was a very impractical dream.

This week I have had two acceptances and a strange refusal. The two acceptances were from editors who sometimes reject my work, so that was good. The rejection was from a members’ anthology, which traditionally accepts something from every member. This was, I admit, a bit of a surprise.

Looking at the numbers for this year I will end up with about the same number of acceptances as last year and about twice as many rejections. It’s all part of my process of pushing boundaries and toughening up in my responses to rejection.

Philip Larkin – Looks like Eric Morecambe, had a few faults, turned down the chance to be Poet Laureate

I’m also trying to stop rattling on about rejections and such stuff as it’s of limited interest to most people. However, my poetry-based general knowledge did get me a couple of pointless answers on Pointless recently. It was about Poets Laureate. I got two pointless answers. My third answer (Day-Lewis) didn’t count because they wanted ones who had been in office ten years or more and he dies after just four years. The father and son team who answered, didn’t get any. Amongst others, they selected Philip Larkin (who turned the offer down) and Simon Armitage. These days they are only nominated for 10 years so Armitage, who is still in post, failed on the 10 year point. I can’t remember who else they nominated, it may have been Hughes, but he scored points and you need to be pointless to win the money.

Simon Armitage – seems a decent bloke but clearly disconnects when sitting in a barber’s chair

I tell you this because the son had been accepted by Oxford University. I love being able to answer questions that defeat Oxbridge students. They are generally better than me on subjects like Chinese cities, quantum physics and classical music but I love to find chinks in their armour. I am a natural descendent of the archers of Agincourt, bringing down the flower of French chivalry on a muddy field before seeing them off with with a precisely placed dagger.

For a poetic version try Kipling’s Arithmetic on the Frontier. I have added the link so you don’t need to search through a load of clutter about handbags. Handbags. What is the world coming to?

No proposition Euclid wrote
No formulae the text-books know,
Will turn the bullet from your coat,
Or ward the tulwar’s downward blow.
Strike hard who cares—shoot straight who can—
The odds are on the cheaper man.

Kipling – first British Nobel Prize winner (1907), turned down a knighthood and the offer to be Poet Laureate. Not always politically correct but wrote some great poetry, even if it hasn’t all aged gracefully.

 

Some Thoughts on Poetry and Editors

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I’m still working on the Gladstone story, just not very fast. However, I am writing plenty of poetry. If I were a scientist I would probably put forward the theory that freeing myself from the shackles of WP and numismatic writing, has made me feel more relaxed and has released my ability to write poetry.

However, other variables include lower temperatures, better sleep and reading a book on how to write better poetry. And coincidence. I have always written in a way I could compare to peaks and troughs. However, it used to take me longer to descend from a peak and the troughs just represented a lower level of output. Now I seem to drop off the peaks much more quickly and the troughs are deeper, and are often accompanied by a period of struggle to write.

A lot of the problem, I think, goes back a few years to the times when I had some serious infections. Each one stopped me writing for a week or so, then slowed me down, sometimes for months. Before the infections I used to submit my work on the first day a submission window opened. I like to have things ready. As I slowed down I slipped back until I was struggling to have enough poetry to submit. I often had to resort to submitting things written on the day of submission, and sending submissions to the USA after my midnight, because the time difference worked in my favour.  Sometimes, of course, I came unstuck.

And before you ask, yes, various people declare that you should leave poetry in a drawer for a month, or even a year, before sending it to an editor. I agree. It’s always better when you give yourself time, as early drafts can contain clunkiness, and even downright gibberish.  However, I can confirm that it’s possible to write a poem, send it off the same day and still have it accepted. It’s not a good working practice, but if that’s the only choice you have, you have to work with it.

I also believe that getting in first gives you an advantage. If you write well, someone has to write even better to displace you in the selection process. If two poems are submitted on the same subject, the first one is in a better position for selection. It’s not scientific, and it may not accurately reflect the actual way that editors select, but I always think any possible advantage is worth having.

I’m currently in a position to make five submissions now, instead of waiting until the end of the month. I will do that in the next couple of days and start work on next month’s submissions. Next month is a strenuous month and it will be good to approach it well prepared. I often say that of course, but this time I really feel I can mange it.

Another benefit, (and one I am sure about) is that if you submit early you can get early rejections, and they can be recycled. It’s possible, doing that, to submit the same piece twice in the same submission period. Very efficient and when, as sometimes happens, it is accepted second time around, a useful reminder that all editors have different opinions.

 

A Writer’s Guide to Non-Writing Things You Need To Do

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I’ve just caught up on several days worth of posts I hadn’t read. I’ve also allowed myself to divert into the shadowy byways of Wikipedia. One of those was necessary, the other occupies an anomalous position – it’s top level procrastination, but it’s also a source of inspiration (or so I tell myself).

Several of the posts I have read are poetry blogs, which is always useful. I like seeing what proper poets are doing.

I had a bit of research to do on a poem I was writing, so I ordered a book from World of Books on Amazon. It wasn’t expensive, just under £5 with P&P, but it was described as Used- Very Good. When it arrived, with bumped corners, mild staining, yellowed pages and an old sticky label, it looked more like Shabby would have been a better description. I was not pleased but will suck it up as it had the information I required. I’ll be looking at other companies in future. It’s not the first time they have over-claimed on a book’s condition.

I’ve now had the first of the emails about July Submissions. It’s an acceptance for a Haibun, albeit a frustrating one.

They liked all three but could only select one, which seems to be increasingly common. They went for one above the others because it covers current events. In due course i will let you know when it is published.

Meanwhile, I have been sorting out my poems. Everytime a deadline comes round for haiku, it becomes clear that I have some poems i could probably send, if only I had a better system of filing them. Actually, it applies to all my poems, but is worse with haiku. 

I have sorted a couple of years of haiku submissions and estimate I have thirty or forty I could retrieve from the rejected poems. That’s the frustration of the system where you send ten in to get one selected. Admittedly 5/10 are poor and better being deleted, but there is still usable material in the rejects.

It took most of a day, and there is a lot left to sort through. I’d better get going . . .

 

Time to Write a List

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Wild flowers

Today, after all the normal impedimenta of life had been cleared and Julia had been waved off to her afternoon in the tearoom, I started work in earnest.

First – the list, specifically the poetry list.

I need around 20 haiku for various things and have about six which are currently suitable. Some of them are needed for the end of the week. Last week was not a good writing week and I needed some discipline. I put it on my list and I now have 21 to sort through. It’s not enough, as there are always some that fail to make the grade, but it’s a start.

I need a variety of other poems, but I have until the end of the month to finish them. It’s not an ideal timescale but it’s more relaxed than last month.

Pigs and flowers

It’s not an ideal system, because it is probably best characterised as the triumph of quantity over quality. On the other hand, it’s unavoidable that the doctrine of practice makes perfect also takes a hand and the more I write, the better I get. There was a drop back in quality a year or so ago but as I had sepsis twice, and as it’s usually accompanied by the words “life threatening” when you see it described in newspapers, I’m going to cut myself some slack there.

I’m feeling a lot better now that’s settled, and all it took was a list to set me going. I notes and prompts but until I made a list, nothing happened.  By tomorrow the effect of the list will have worn off, but I’m going to be happy this afternoon.

However, Julia will be back in an hour and I’d like to get more done so I will leave it now. The more of this month’s writing that I do now, the more of next month’s I can get a head start on.

Flowers

A note on modern retail – they don’t do the cheap flowers at TESCO now, you have to buy from an affiliate. The difference is that flowers at £3.99-£5.99 are something you can add on a whim and delivery, with the groceries, is easy. They are now much nicer flowers, but they cost £24.99 and come at inconvenient times. I’m going to re-examine my flower buying habits.

 

 

Thursday Morning 6.22

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It’s actually 6.23 now, but if I go back and correct the title more time will leak away. It’s rare, but I actually wrote the title first today.

August is here and the year seems to be rushing by. I’ve often felt like this – it’s just what seems to happen. The longest day is behind us, the year hovers for a while, like a cartoon boat on the brink of a waterfall, and August arrives. I think of autumn, shorter days and mortality. It’s one of those months (April being the other) when the progress of the year seems to reach a point of no return. In April I realise that the new year is properly under way and four months later . . .

I’m struggling. After being selected for a Distinctive Scribble award in Eucalypt magazine, I have to select a poem for the next edition and write something intelligent about it. The selection of the poems was simple enough. I read them all twice then started going through them again slowly. My short list took shape and I ended up with a list of about a quarter of the poems in the issue. It would have been longer but as you go through yuo can discard a number as you know they aren’t going to make the cut. Then you can go back and cut some of the early choices.

O

I’m left with eleven. A day later I’m left with three. But have so far failed to say anything sensible. The trouble is that so many poets have multiple degrees. I don’t. The review of my poem includes the words “concluding spondee”. A spondee is a metrical foot consisting of two long syllables. It’s one of those poetic things I zoned out when we did it at school. I am incapable of writing anything like that  My only hope is that I can get through the experience without making myself look like a total idiot. The gist of my comments (which look like they should be about 500 words long), is that I picked the winner because I liked it more than the others. The problem is that I now have to explain, in 490 words, why I liked it.

So – select the best poem out of 80 good poems. Let 79 poets down gently. Avoid sounding like an idiot.

What could possibly go wrong?

Here’s my poem, by the way. You may recognise the story of the shed.

  we had several
half tins of assorted paint
and a subdued shed
now we have neither
—bright stripes

 

I can only find one of the shed photos, the rest are flowers from the gardens at roughly the time of the shed painting.

Kintsugi – Broken Pots and Gold Paint

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Kintsugi is the ancient Japanese art of repairing broken pots.

It’s fine to start with – it’s about mending broken pots, embracing the imperfections, adding to the history of the object and making it more beautiful. It can be extended to include personal qualities like working with your faults and bouncing back from adversity.  Broken items are put back together and the repairs are highlighted in gold.

In Japan it is an ancient art form.

In the hands of the west it has become a handicraft, the philosophy has been cheapened and it is now possible to do courses and buy kits. I checked with one of the courses. Step One of the course is to break a pot, which does not seem true to the original intention (though there were accusations of collectors doing this in Japan in previous centuries). It is also possible to buy kits, one of which gave me a moment of amusement. The feedback indicated that one of the tea bowls in the kit had arrived broken, but went on to point out that this saved a job. Probably the only time an item broken in transport has been well received.

I’m not knocking it, because it can still produce a lovely and artistic piece of work, but I am pointing out that if you are happy with that, don’t dress it up. And if you want to be true to the spirit of kintsugi, don’t break a pot on purpose. Meanwhile, I got a poem out of it. I may get another. Released from the tyranny of submissions deadlines I find I can, once again, write. Definitely time for a rethink.

This is a haibun which mentions kintsugi, though only in  small way. More of it is about Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera and being married. And, of course, specifically about being married to a woman who stabbed herself in the jugular vein with a piece of broken plant pot because she wouldn’t ask for help. I originally posted a link to it from this post so if you remember it, sorry for being repetitive.

Self Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird (1940)

 

A Necklace of Thorns

Despite their fame, their paintings and their place in history, Diego and Frida (we are on first name terms in my imagination) still had to chat about the weather, and bicker about who forgot to buy more milk for breakfast. I imagine the weather was mostly sunny, and that it was Diego who forgot the milk. With his affairs and all those frescoes, it must have been difficult to fit the shopping in.

My wife’s throat, spiked with black sutures, is less inflamed today. I check each morning, trying not to let my worries show. Across the toast crumbs, she reminds me that we need more bread today, and I have to paint the garage doors this spring. For a moment my mind flits to a glorious picture of doors featuring Leon Trotsky and Emiliano Zapata against a backdrop of moustachioed revolutionaries. My wife suggests we stick with green.

today
she has her stitches out
I joke I will buy
gold paint to mend the scar
shared history

First Published cho 22.1 (2026)

Zapata and Trotsky seemed to disappear when I wanted them.

 

Poetry, Procrastination and Pampas Grass

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I am now on a 62 day activity streak. I know this because WP tells me so. To get this one I have had to log in and procrastinate for two months. It doesn’t rank up there with the Nobel Peace Prize, Oxford Professor of Poetry, or a Blue Peter Badge.

The Oxford professorship is still in my mind from a conversation I had with Julia recently. I can’t remember how I started on the train of thought but she asked me what I was thinking about, as she sometimes does. The honest answer, much of the time is “absolutely nothing”, but I try to make something up. If she can be bothered to ask, I really ought to make the attempt to be interesting.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

A couple of days ago I was honestly able to answer “I was just thinking that I’m glad I never applied to be Oxford professor of Poetry. It’s too political.”

You also need to be good at poetry, but I never let that sort of thing intrude into my thoughts.

To Julia’s credit, she didn’t miss a beat, just asked me more about it. From there we got onto the subject of Simon Armitage’s haircut. It’s not so bad at the moment but a few years ago it looked like a cross between a mop and a desperate cry for help in the midst of a mid-life crisis. I’m clearly not one to talk as both my hairstyles are questionable (billiard ball or “rough sleeper” being the two options), but it was very noticeable. Even Julia noticed it, and she is usually quite accepting of hirsute horror shows.

Thinking about it, I should probably have made something up along the lines of “How lucky I am to be married to you dear.” but I missed my chance and only just realised.

Here’s a link to Simon Armitage’s poem Chainsaw versus the Pampas Grass.  The commentary accompanying the poem says the poem is about overkill. That commentary is clearly written by someone who has never had to manage pampas grass in a garden. The last one I removed needed a hedge trimmer and an axe. The hole it left looked like the garden had been the victim of shellfire.

 

 

Another Day, Another Poem

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My apologies, I have been a bit erratic and those of you who notice such things may have registered my absence for part of the week. It is simply a case of me using my time unwisely. I have caught up with some of it but have decided to let slide.

My apologies, too, for two poems in two days. There’s something tedious about poets publishing their own poetry in quantity, but these two fit together so I thought I’d do them both.

In the meantime, I have had a poem accepted, submitted a few more and had a piece used in a local newsletter. It was based on Major Becher. I have written about him before in several places. I really should go back and make a correction – his son was not killed in a plane crash, but in  an Italian bombing raid. Same result, but different details.

I said, in a previous post, I was going to publish my other, unsuccessful, nomination for the anthology. In a number of ways I prefer this one and would be interested in hearing what people think.

It is 105 words and it is complete. That as i keep saying to people. is the beauty of writing poetry compared to novels.

Autodidact with Knife and Fork

Workmen drag temporary traffic lights into place as their companions spray bright colours on the road. An old lady stoops suddenly, pulls a plastic bag from her pocket, picks up the mess her ancient dachshund made. A scowling mother with a double buggy, swerves around the crouching woman, forcing a teenager to jump aside. He almost drops his phone. A shopkeeper and a builder stand outside a shop, point to a green vee on the wall, discuss the leaking gutter. 

as a child
Breughel’s busy peasants
lived on my place mat
the things my father taught me
over Sunday lunch

For those of you who like context, I “wrote” most of it whilst I was in a queue caused by roadworks where Edwards Lane and Mansfield Road meet outside the Sherwood Manor pub. Sometimes poems just come to me.  The people were all people I saw that day, though not all while i was waiting – the men looking at the shop cropped up later. I missed out the blind man who got mixed up in it all as it was too complicated to explain how he swerved round the lady with the dog and thus showed he had more sight than his white stick suggested. Sometimes less is more. One day I might give him a poem of his own.

It’s a very different process to the previous poem, which was much more engineered and less spontaneous.

It was accepted by Ribbons, first time out, though there was a heavy edit – the final two lines (31 words) were removed and the story of the mats was contained in the rewritten tanka.

Again, no photo. I really am falling down on the job.

A Poem and a Commentary

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That is the haibun that I mentioned yesterday. It’s 98 words, which is why I don’t mind describing myself as a poet, but hesitate to claim to be a writer.

I’ve just been reading a book on writing poetry.  It is very scornful about Japanese forms, and about tanka in particular. And about the sad old men, he says, that write them. I checked the internet but, so far, have been unable to find evidence of the book’s author setting the world of poetry aflame. This is so often the case.

There is an expression that those who can, do, and those that can’t teach. Or criticise. But teachers and critics both have important places in the world, and both have sets of skills related to the job. People who write books about how to write poetry (and I have read a few now) seldom have much to offer. In the old days you could at least have given the book to charity or used it as emergency toilet paper, but in the digital age these satisfactions are no longer available.

Anyway, the poem – first published in Blithe Spirit, the journal of the British Haiku Society, in 2025 and then anthologised in Contemporary Haibun 21.

Living Art

In the lull between lunch and the afternoon shoppers, one cup of coffee is all it takes to secure two hours of peace. The cafe does not do “cheerful” but you can’t have everything for this price. For happiness and choice you need the more modern American-style coffee shops. Here the choice is limited to “with” and “without” milk. Sometimes I imagine myself in one of Hopper’s paintings, or stare at Rodin’s Thinker on another table. Today, sagging in in summer heat, Dali comes to mind.

bitter coffee
and the radio news
—rehearsing for The Scream

 

Tomorrow, I will publish the other poem that was nominated for the anthology. I actually think it was better than this one, and would be interested in what people think.

For people who like to know a bit more, the idea came whilst I was reading about the life of Edward Hopper. The idea of the half-empty cafe came from Nighthawks and the coffee cam from some tanka i had written on the subject after submitting some tanka written around a theme. I can’t remember the theme. In my hands it became about disappointment, though it may have been something more cheerful originally. I imagined myself in a typical English cafe, rather than an American diner, re-used the coffee/disappointment motif, and thought of Dali’s melting clocks. It was July and heat was on my mind. From there I added a bit more art and that was it.

I had previously submitted it to another magazine. The original version had a different title, a different haiku and 31 more words.  It also only mentioned Hopper. I took out about 60 words, replaced them with 30 different ones and added the extra artists.

Looking at it now, I don’t know how I thought the original version was good enough to submit, but that’s the way it happens. That’s why poems need time to mature. However, if you don’t send them out, you don’t always have the urge to improve.

No photos today. Can’t think of anything suitable to use.

That Whisper in my Ear

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Yesterday I received my copy of Contemporary Haibun 21. I may have mentioned a few months ago that I wanted to buy a poetry book from the USA but didn’t want to pay $30 for postage on top of the $30 cost of the book.

My Orange Parker Pen

However, I checked an old email account and found an email with the offer of a $10 discount on the book, because I am in it. Vanity got the better of me, and despite the combined costs being enough to buy two takeaway meals for the two of us, I gritted my teeth and paid the price.

It is “an annual anthology of English-language haibun (and haiga) gleaned from the best practitioners from around the world”. (Haiga are pictures paired up with a haiku for those of you who are lost in the sea of foreign words that begin with hai).

It’s not a bad thing to be in, but when I look, I can’t help thinking about the people who are in it three times where I am only in it once. Are they three times better than me?  How much better do I need to become? Three of them are editors who have been very active in rejecting me over the years. They are also editors of the anthology, so it makes it miraculous that I actually made the cut. One of them seems far too enthusiastic in rejecting me when I submit to the journal where he is a newly appointed editor. He’s new to this job, but I wonder if his zeal will be reflected in the selections next year. If it is, I may be able to save a lot of money.

Two pens – one made by my wife

On the other hand, if they left out the last 50 pages, which are reprints of articles I have already read, it might have been cheaper to print and post.

Tricky.

How much do I crave publication? How much is it worth? Is it worth worrying about when a significant number of the editors are generally not keen on my work? Why does something I should be happy about become a matter for deep thought and depression? If I were Roman general I would have someone next to me whispering in my ear to bring me down to earth, but I don’t, and I can do it all by myself.