Category Archives: poetry

Robins – Red in Tooth and Claw

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I had a post prepared for today, but it’s just 350 words banging on about the mechanics of making poetry submissions. It’s not, on re-reading it, particularly entertaining. It’s interesting to me, but that’s no excuse for inflicting it on other people.

Instead I’m going to talk about writing haiku in a foreign language. There are magazines which invite submissions in foreign languages and I have read some haiku in French. I may be missing some of the nuances but the remnants of my schoolboy French are generally up to the job with an occasional input from Google Translate. However, this will only do the words and not the layers of meaning which may be contained in them.

But it’s not French I want to speak about, it’s American.

1995 Robin stamp

I ran into a problem the other day. I was putting the finishing touches to some submissions when i realised that one of them wouldn’t do at all. It included the battle of Naseby, which, if Adlestrop is obscure, will be well beyond the comprehension of most Americans. This isn’t a criticism – I would flounder if I read a poem about Gettysburg.  We are separated by several centuries of diverging history, plus spelling and the use of words which have different meanings.

Then we come to nuance. I first ran into translation problems when submitting a poem that featured a goldcrest. They don’t have goldcrests in USA, but they do have kinglets, so I translated the bird to a kinglet. The poem was duly rejected but at least I made the effort. One problem with this is that I know about goldcrests, but I’m not quite sure if they behave in exactly the same way.

Robin at Rufford Abbey

This is a problem, as many birds come with meanings and mannerisms that may not be understood by people from other places. I was about to submit a poem that included a robin on Saturday when it occurred to me the image wouldn’t work in America. The American Robin is a thrush with a red breast.

For a full run-down of the various cheery robin stories, read this. It’s missing two important bits though. One is that the breast is supposed to be red because Christ bled on it when it plucked a thorn out of His brow on the cross. The other is that  they have a reputation for being aggressive. You probably don’t know this if you don’t live in a country with robins. I was using it as part of an image in a poem alluding to the war in Ukraine when I realised it wasn’t going to work in America. This is a problem as most of the magazines for haibun are American.

It’s just one more thing to consider.

Their goldfinches are different too. It’s all very confusing.

A Tale, Told by an Idiot

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Do you remember a few days ago when I said ” from today I am going to set targets and become a writing machine”. Well I did. I set up my poem factory and set to work. I also found a few places to make more submissions and decided to target haiku. As a result, I had an acceptance today.

It’s part of the power of positive thinking. I was going to get rid of some books last week. They are mainly old sales and marketing books passed on by my Dad, but with some motivational books too.. Many of them are actually still relevant as good sales technique and positive thinking never goes out of fashion. There’s no mystique about it despite all the stuff that’s written. To make sales you ask the decision-maker for the order. To achieve success through positive thinking you do something, and you do it now.

That’s what I did – I wrote poems, I showed them to an editor and one was selected.

No jargon, no mystique, no spirituality, despite the reams of rubbish written on the subject. Just plain common sense.

The poem factory is a similar no nonsense set-up. It is anathema to all the proper, spiritual poets out there. They believe (and this is particularly true with haiku) that you should experience “a moment” and compose the poem there and then. Good on them. I’ve done it sometimes, but it’s not common.

Poems which are stitched together from memory or manufactured from two moments or, heaven forbid, simply made up, are known. scornfully. as desk-ku. It’s becoming slightly more common to admit to them now, but there’s still some snobbery on the subject. Even the old masters did them, but the myth of the haiku moment persists.

Anyway, I write a list of ideas or prompts, or open up  file of old photos, or even open a book of poetry and mine it for ideas. As T S Eliot said  “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.” I am, I feel, perfectly capable of taking an idea from a poem without copying the idea or the wording of the poem.

This is one I took from life, rather than nature.

I have dustier piles – trust me on this

a pile of books
the dust settles on my
good intentions

(First Published in Failed Haiku – forgot the date.)

This one is from nature, and done in the moment, but it doesn’t really convey the misty morning and the salty wind as we walked and watched seals.

Sea Buckthorn. I promise you there were goldfinches too, but I couldn’t get a good shot.

goldfinches
calling from the sea buckthorn
bright berries

(First Published in Presence 71)

This one was completely made up, but all the bits were true. Robins sing, blackthorn blooms early in the year and at the time, during Covid, we were forced to queue outside shops. I wrote it after queuing for a shop. I needed some props so I added the bird, the song and the blackthorn. Does it make me a bad man?

a robin
sings from the blackthorn
—we queue for the shop

(First published Wales Haiku Journal Spring 2021) 

Robin - singing

Robin – singing. OK, it’s in holly, but give me a break.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

(Macbeth, William Shakespeare).

I may start stealing from Shakespeare next. Let’s face it, he stole all the time.

Yet Another Acceptance and a Lot of Fruit

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Sunday’s Second Post.

The good thing about one of the acceptances I had earlier in the month was the nine rejections. I think I’ve explained before that editors generally want a batch of ten tanka, and normally only select one. I have had more selected sometimes, but it always seems greedy when you are taking a space someone else would be happy to use. The nine returns were recycled – one being removed. Two were then added to the batch, which was sent out and, shortly after, provided the next acceptance (which was one of the ones that had been rejected by the previous editor). The second editor also named several they would like to see again in a few months if they are still available. They will be, because it seems  good thing to do. That means I have to wite four more to add to the batch and it can be my next submission.

In a similar vein, I have just received news of a Haibun acceptance. It’s the third time this particular Haibun has been out and it’s another slow burner as it seems to have been round for years. I worked on it for about a year and kept it back for a competition entry. It disappeared without trace, as most of my competition entries do, but I sent it out a couple more times and it has found a home. Sorry if this makes it sound like an adorable homeless kitten, but I do get attached to some of my poems.

In the past i have managed to place poems which have been turned down by as many as four editors, sometimes without even making changes. Once I even had one accepted within days of it being returned. And, in case you should think I am boasting, sometimes I haven’t. Sometimes I’ve had something returned two or three times, lost faith in it and allowed it to fade away.

I’ve read blogs by other poets who say they had things accepted after a dozen refusals, or that they are still trying years after they wrote something. I don’t have that level of confidence or fortitude. Or, to be honest, organisation.

Meanwhile, the fruit pictures are part of our harvest. The plums are doing well, the blackberries ditto, and the tomatoes are just coming into their own. We really must get a greenhouse when we move. The figs are a gift – not sure about the variety, but they aren’t Brown Turkey like the last lot. They are very sweet and so ripe you can just suck the contents out.  Photos are via Julia’s phone.

The Best Poem I Ever Wrote (Nearly)

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I spoke to Number Two Son in Canada last night. I had been intending to nag him for some time in a gently paternal way, but thought I’d wait for him to call as it’s cheaper to nag on his bill. As it turned out, he is ahead of me. He has already made some steps towards signing up to do some professional qualifications and is also seeking a pensions advisor to bolster his pension arrangements. Clearly we have a telepathic link. We all want our children to better than we have done, and both of mine already have. This is the advantage of starting off with a parent who is a fairly low benchmark.

A few nights ago I wrote the best poem I have ever written (apart from the one about the Kingfisher, but I’m keeping that under wraps for now). It has taken three years to write and has been through many versions. I sent it out last month and it came back, but I had another look, tinkered with it let it rest. I am going to look at it again tonight and see if I still think it is the best I’ve ever written. There is a chance I will spot a new crop of faults. Even if I do, it’s till going out again – after three years it’s time for it to do something. It’s a bit like kids – there’s a point when they have to go.

White-tailed Bumblebee

Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite as good as I thought, so I made a couple of changes (I hesitate to say improvements). looked at it and decided not to send it out after all. The real problem is the subject – the field that hosted the Battle of Naseby in 1645. I’m not sure if it’s a wide enough subject to appeal to editors. I’m still, in truth, smarting from being told that my Adlestrop poem was too obscure. That was in February last year and I’m still annoyed. I’ve just been looking to see if it was ever accepted elsewhere. The trouble is that there is a black hole in my record keeping after the computer broke down and that brings a lack of certainty.  Did it go unpublished, or can I simply not find the acceptance?

My contention here is that if I am reading an American poem I am expected to, be able to place the South Boston Aquarium  or a red wheelbarrow or a road not taken, so why not Adlestrop? When Frost wrote about the road not taken he was possibly referring to the road taken by his friend Edward Thomas , writer of  Adelstrop and was wondering whether to stay with his family or to join the army. For back up I’m citing this article, which mentions Adlestrop and gives some brilliant examples. It’s only short, and worth reading just for the two examples.

Dog Rose

Apart from the question of obscurity (which is easily solved by Google these days) how about a footnote? I personally find them condescending in most cases – is the writer merely seeking to show how clever they are? But they have their place.

The brilliant poem? In the end it wasn’t necessary. I found one that was just as good, tinkered and sent it off. This morning I woke up and thought of an extra line that would have improved it greatly . . .

As someone once said, you never finish a poem you just set it adrift.

Smells and Drugs and Water Voles

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So many small pieces of news that it’s difficult to know where to start. My drug delivery arrived last night as planned. After 18 months it seems that I may have got through to them that I’m not at home during the day and that as they need refrigeration I need an evening delivery. Seems simple but it’s been hard work getting the idea across. They offer evening delivery slots so I don’t know what the problem is. It’s a small victory, but one that feels worth celebrating.

There was no smell of sewerage in the shop this morning. I’m cautiously optimistic that yesterday’s gurgling was a sign that things have been fixed. However, based on previous experience, it could be too soon to say it’s solved.

Following on from the last good news on acceptance I have had two more, one yesterday and one today. The momentum is building again. The tanka that was accepted today was one that was not selected last week. You just can’t tell what an editor is going to like.

I watched a news report on the reintroduction of water voles last night. They released several hundred in the lake District. The main thing with helping the water vole population increase is that you have to control the population of American Mink. I’ll let you read up on the subject. I’ve already made my mind up. American Mink don’t appear in Wind in the Willows, and thus, in my opinion, have no place in our waterways. The link has, in case you didn’t read it, the fascinating fact that mink droppings smell pungent and fishy whereas otter droppings smell of jasmine tea. It’s difficult, reading that, to imagine what some of these researchers get up to when left to work unsupervised.

Yellow Flag Irises

More Work, Less Play

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Finally I seem to be getting back in the groove and, for once, actually have things written in advance. Although I had enough for three submissions last night, it still took me the best part of two hours to send them off. Each magazine wants a different format, and even though they want the same information, they want it in different forms and in one case, are very keen that you do it in a very specific order. By the time I’d finished sorting all that out, I then noticed some ways to “improve” the poems one last time. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.

Anyway, it’s done. I’m planning on making six submissions this month. I’d better get a move on, because one of them closes on 25th and i haven’t started writing it yet. Out of the six, three are to places where I submit regularly. Two are to places I submit to irregularly (I’ve been giving them a miss recently, during my dry spell) and one is to a magazine that has never accepted anything from me, and where I haven’t submitted for about three years.

This is getting back to the old days when it was all about the submissions, and I had plenty of material to send. Recently, with less to send I’ve been playing safe and only submitting to the easy ones. This change of attitude is, I think, the last thing I needed to do to get back to the old way of doing things. All I need now is plenty of ideas. That’s another area where I’ve been struggling but it seems that as my writing is picking up pace, so is the generation of ideas. I have read articles that claim you get more ideas if you write more and so far it seems to be the case.

Of course, I’m a narcissist and I write to see my name in print, so the real test will be to see if I increase my acceptances, not just my workload.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

A Gift of Figs

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I spent twenty minutes last night on final editing for a submission. Time is pressing and I am trying to show more ambition this month. Unfortunately, as I filled out the list of submissions I noted that I had already submitted it to someone else. I have so many in various states of completion that I sometimes lose track – hence the list. It doesn’t help when, as with this one, the file is listed under one name but the submission is listed under a different one. Titles change and I don’t always change the file names. It happens.

So, two things. One is that I wasted twenty minutes. Two is that the edits make it a far better piece, so I am annoyed for submitting something that needed more work. This annoyance will worsen if it is returned. I will blame myself for sloppy work. If it is accepted, I will feel annoyed that I’m not showing my best work. There is an obvious lesson about organisation and efficiency in this story, but my files are in a mess and I can’t see an easy way to sort it. Over Christmas I will reorganise things and make more effort to keep things straight.

Figs

It is not the first time I have said something similar, and the fact that I have files on the computer with words like “Old”, “New Start” and “Tidy Up” in the name, provides proof of this. I have around 45 active haibun and tanka prose, though it’s difficult to be precise with the chaotic filing system. I just wrote a list of them, as I need to make an effort to get them all properly finished. As I did that, I realised that some weren’t good enough to justify making more effort with them. That happens all the time. I can work on something for a year sometimes, before it strikes me that it simply isn’t good enough. Mostly it’s because it isn’t very interesting, or because it rambles on without reaching a point. If I think it’s dull or pointless there’s a very good chance  that editors will do the same.will find the same.

The pictures? The garden fruit harvest has begun. We picked plums at the weekend and Julia brought apples back from the gardens. Tonight, one of the neighbours brought figs round. It’s one of my favourite times of year, though it’s always a little sad that the year is beginning to come to an end.

Reflected Plums – Victoria

The Power of Planning 2

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If you have come straight here, you my need to go back to what is Part 1. However, it isn’t listed as such because I didn’t know it was going to be  two-parter when I started. Or even when I finished, to be honest.

hat happened was that I drifted off at a tangent and didn’t realise I was going to want to revisit it.

So, the poetry plan. First we need a target that is Specific. We will go for the acceptance of 50 Japanese style poems and 25 “ordinary” ones. That’s four a month for the Japanese and two a month for the others.It’s not a huge target, as I’ve already had thirty one accepted in the last ten months.I’m thinking that I will end the 12 months on about 40. Fifty is not a big jump from there. The twenty five is a bigger jump, as I haven’t submitted any fr a couple of years, but at two a month I should be able to do that. To be more specific I am going to go for 20 Haibun/Tanka Prose, 20 Tanka and ten haiku. I’m not very good at haiku so that is probably the biggest challenge.

That’s specific done. Measurable is easy enough – acceptances of poetry submitted  in the months of August 2023 to July 2024. It can be a bit tricky measuring poetry as the lead time after acceptance can make counting tricky, which is why I’m counting acceptances.

I’ve already covered Achievable in the Specific category – none of the figures I’ve quoted are outrageous and I’m sure the Japanese figure is going to be realistic as I hardly submit any haiku at the moment. The other figure, the twenty five is a bit more speculative, but not unrealistic. I have lost count but I think when I was submitting free verse a few years ago I had bout ten accepted by decent journals.

My Orange Parker Pen

Realistic already seems to have been fully covered from the writing point of view. From the publishing point of view, there should be enough openings to get this number of poems published. There are some magazines where i do badly, as in always get knocked back, but there are enough to take fifty and I will just have to up my game and try harder to crack the others. That’s the thing with targets – with targets I try different magazines, without them I tend to withdraw to my comfort zone.

Time? Twelve months. I assumed that from the beginning.

I will now need to set my diary out for 12 months, including all the likely magazines and submission windows. Then I will have to remember to keep a total and compare it to the plan. That’s it. Simple.

Now let’s see what happens.

Stone on the Floor

 

 

 

 

 

A Pond in Poetry

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Burntstump Country Park, Notts

First Published in Wales Haiku Journal Autumn 2020.

I’d alter it slightly if I were submitting it now, but always feel that once they are released into the world I shouldn’t tinker.

As published, it was about a third of its original length, the rest dwelling on the decline of great country houses after the Great War. I suppose a lot of poems have  a similar back story. The pond in the pictures is the pond I write about, though the yellow flags are just out of the picture. I may have done this one in the blog before – sorry if that is the case.

What the Water Sees

At the end of the woodland path a pond waits in the sunlight. It has been there for a century and a half.

Purple-flowered rhododendrons tumble down one bank, doubled by their reflection in the water. Today it is quiet, disturbed only by birdsong and the movement of water voles. It is a different place at weekends. Parents and dog owners shatter the peace with their yelling and the ducks are pelted with volleys of bread.

The pond remains unchanged. The scent of wild garlic drifts from the woods and a moorhen fusses round a stand of yellow flags.

a place in history
the shape of a vole
in water

 

Burnt Stump Country Park

Time for a Change of Pace

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Here’s a Tanka prose from a while back. I thought it was time for a more relaxed posting. It’s tempting, after my recent reading of a book of poetry criticism, to write about the poem. But I won’t, because it won’t improve anything.

This was first published in Ribbons, in Winter 2023.

The Shadow of the Red Kite

Simon Wilson, Nottingham, UK

The autumn sun warms my back as we sit in the old stable yard. My wife outlines her plans for the day and I run my fingers over the grain in the silvery surface of the weathered tearoom table. Our tea and bara brith arrive. Translated from the Welsh, bara brith means speckled bread, referring to the dried fruit that is its most noticeable feature.

Three wasps also arrive. Two fly away as my wife flaps her hand at them, but one lands on the table and stalks my food. It hauls itself over the rim and begins to gorge on the juicy centre of a raisin. My wife tells me to chase it off but I don’t have the heart. It is September and soon it will die. I can spare a little dried fruit for a fellow struggler.

She breaks off the conversation and points over my shoulder. I turn to see the distinctive silhouette of a Red Kite overhead. When I was a child, it was a very rare bird in the UK, and survived only in Wales. I remember the combined thrill and disappointment I experienced on a family holiday when I was ten years old–the profile and the flash of red that denoted a kite, but at a distance so great I could hardly see it, and never quite believed I had seen one.

kites in the sky
and mist on the mountains
with you beside me
if this is all life is
it is enough

 

Red Kites at Gigrin Farm