Tag Archives: acceptance

Would Larkin call it Quiche?

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Swings and Roundabouts, what goes around comes around, as one door closes another door opens . . .

Hot on the heels of my last rejection comes an acceptance. Not only an acceptance, but an acceptance for two tanka prose. Any double acceptance is a red letter day, as I said recently. This one was particularly good, as I had only sent two.

This is when I noticed something strange. The three that had been rejected a couple of days ago, looked poor when they were returned. The two that were accepted looked good when I re-read them. When I sent them off, they all seemed to be much the same level. It looks like I evaluate my work in relation to what happens when it is judged by an editor.

I must guard against this effect when viewing my work.

Here is a haibun that was rejected many times (four, I think) but accepted within hours by the final editor. It changed a few times over its life but the final version was not, as I recall, changed from the version that had been rejected by the previous editor.

Hidden Worlds

He wears a grey gaberdine and rides a bicycle from church to church. In his head he composes poems about sex and tombs. On YouTube he flickers in black and white, like a newsreel from the 1950s. Smiles are clearly still on ration.

Larkin used more bad language than you normally expect from a librarian. This becomes understandable when you find that he started his day with half a bottle of sherry.

monochrome photo
my parents younger than me
1963

Inspired by the life of Philip Larkin

(Published in Failed Haiku – February 2021)

I added the footnote because I had just been rejected by an editor for being obscure( it was a poem about a visit to Adlestrop). The editor who accepted it, did not use the footnote. You might want to read this, if you aren’t familiar with Larkin. I selected 1963 partly because of the poem and partly because of the sound. It wasn’t an easy decision because the rhyme counts against it in Japanese style poetry.

Meanwhile here are some pictures of my latest quiches, complete with ready made pastry cases. When I was a boy quiches were called flans and my mother used to make “egg and bacon pie”, which has been replaced by Quiche Lorraine. Haven’t we changed over the years? Change and improvement, that old thing.

The top picture is what happened to the leftover egg from the quiches. We just ate it for breakfast. The other pictures are quiches with a definite yellow cast to the photo and a couple of pics of the great biscuit disaster. I only had two cutters – the little man and a glass from the cupboard.

There is a lot of spinach in the flans, though you can’t really see it. We’ve also had it in curry this week. It’s going to mess my INR results up but I ordered a 500g bag with the groceries, which is a lot more spinach than it sounds when you actually have to use it. Green vegetables contain Vitamin K, which is the antidote for Warfarin so if you eat more, the INR goes down. You are supposed to eat the same things each week to stop the INR moving. So the choice is this – die of a blood clot, die of boredom, get scurvy. Discuss.

The Mystery of Editors and Some Thoughts on Writer’s Block

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Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

 

I had my first acceptance from the July submissions on Monday. It was a tanka that had actually been rejected in June, but after a quick check I decided that it was ready to go again.  It was part of a group of nine that had been returned after the tenth was accepted, so I only needed to write one to make the submission up to ten.

It’s one of the age-old questions writers have. I send out ten poems, one is accepted, does that mean the other nine are not good enough?

Sometimes I’ve had an editor ask if they can hold one over for the next edition. I always say yes to that – it saves me work and I assume it saves them work too. If it wasn’t for editors there wouldn’t be any magazines. And if there were no editors and magazines there would be no competition for publication. That’s why I mainly only blog poems that have been published – it means that someone who knows more about it than I do has decided that it merits space.

I’ve also had editors select two or three poems (very, very rarely) and a couple of times they have told me the rest weren’t bad, just not what they wanted for the moment, and I could submit them again at the next submission window. This is very rare – remember we are talking about something in the region of 400 submissions and this sort of thing has happened a handful of times.

Photo by Burst on Pexels.com

It all tends to indicate that several of the ten are publishable, and that they can all be recycled. That’s why I like editors who give quick decisions. If they reject something in the first few weeks, I can use them for another submissions and don’t need to write as much.

This may be a bad attitude, and more akin to the approach of a  worker on a production line than an artist but  this month I’ve just had an article on collectables published in a magazine, plus four Facebook articles for the Numismatic Society of Nottinghamshire and  a couple of longer articles  for the Peterborough Military History Group. If I waited for aesthetics and inspiration to align I’d struggle. Dawn comes, I drag myself from bed, I make tea, then I start writing. I hate mornings. I like tea and I like writing. I have no time for Writer’s Block and curlicues. And I’m more likely to suffer from dehydration than a shortage of words. I have no time for the introspection in the article behind the link. It’s very interesting, and more than slightly familiar, but I can’t afford to let such thoughts take root.

Photo by Roman Koval on Pexels.com

 

Poetry and Robins

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Robin - singing

Robin – singing

a robin
sings to its mate
when was the last time
I sang
for you?

That is my latest publication. It was a surprise, because I hadn’t ben told it was accepted. Fortunately I always check before sending things again, as editors don’t like simultaneous submissions. It’s in a German publication called Chrysanthemum. After waiting a while, I went to check on the website, assuming I’d been rejected but wanting to double check, and found the magazine had already been published and I am on pages 226 and 227.. It was a pleasant surprise. They also translated it into German. I knew this was going to happen, but hadn’t anticipated the different look (using capital letters) or the different dynamic that would come from what seemed to be a reordering of words.

Here’s the German translation.

ein Rotkehlchen
singt für seine Gefährtin
wann habe ich
das letzte Mal
für dich gesungen?

Robin, Arnot Hill Park

I just fed it into an internet translator and it put it into English in almost exactly my words. This was a surprise, and a superb effort by the human translator. I have to admit I was expecting it to come back seriously scrambled due to the changes in word order I could see and because of previous experience with internet translations.

I also had a haibun published.

Lesson not learned
Only a few miles from where I sit, a mammoth died. Grass grows on what was once
a Roman town. Stone spires show where a great religious house rose and fell, then
rose again. So many empires, so many layers of dust telling one and the same story

dreams of
a second chance
— one more grey dawn

I’m not quite sure what happened in the edit as the title and last line have been altered in the published version. Altered but possibly not improved. What do you think? The original version is shown below.

Lessons we have not learned

Only a few miles from where I sit, a mammoth died. Grass grows on what was once a Romans town. Stone spires show where a great religious house rose and fell, then rose again. So many layers, so many stories they could tell. So many men forget all empires turn to dust.

dreams of
a second chance
—one more grey dawn

Robin at Rufford Abbey

That means that in the first four months of the year I have made 30 submissions and 22 have resulted in acceptance. However, before congratulating myself, I have to remember that the 30 submissions contained 151 poems. Normally a submission contains three haibun or tanka prose and the submissions of shorter poems at often 10-15 poems. So when I say I made 30 submissions and had 22 acceptances this 77% success record could also be calculated as also only 15%. It all depends on how you look at it.

Robin

 

 

 

 

General Gleanings

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I found some nice stuff when moving things from one house to the next yesterday. Unfortunately, my feelings of joy were immediately dampened by a run of finding rubbish. The original plan was to leave that in Nottingham and have a skip to take it away. Unfortunately, over the years, things built up and became mixed and it’s become a lot harder to separate the two. This is particularly true at the moment, as I have a bad back and standing for extended periods can be quite trying.

The joy returned when I had an email accepting a poem. It’s a magazine that has published me before, but a new editor, who has constantly turned me down when acting as a guest editor at this magazine and at others. This counts as a small victory on two counts and validates the policy of increasing the number of submissions rather than cherry picking  the ones that are more likely to be successful.

The items were relatively modest, a battered white metal medallion, a worn coin and a 2d transport token.

The Nelson medallion is a membership token for the Shipwrecked Fishermen and Mariners Society. The Society was founded n 1839, so it post-dates Nelson by a few years. This one is dated 1882 and has a number scratched to the left of Nelson’s face – 3157. The slot on the top allows it to be worn on a ribbon as proof of membership. The charity was set up to provide lifeboats and support for shipwrecked sailors or their widows, orphans and parents.  They decided to give up the lifeboats in the 1850s and specialise in the care of survivors and dependents.

The coin is a 1 Franc coin of 1808. The mint Mark “A” seen to the right of the date denotes the Paris Mint. The 1808 A coin makes up 49% of the coin’s mintage and is thus the commonest and cheapest one. Added to its worn condition and this is a coin with a lot of history but not much else going for it. In 1808 Napoleon tried to extend the trade embargo against the UK and invaded the Iberian Peninsula, putting his brother on the throne of Spain and starting the Peninsula war, which would, in 1814, see Wellington’s victorious army sweep into France across the Pyrenees. Sic semper tyrannis.

 

The token is a 2d ticket for one of the Liverpool horse-drawn buses of the 19th Century, probably 1850s – 70s, but I still need to do a bit of work on that one.  This is quite a dark, well-worn specimen, which is good in this context, as somebody mde some copies a few years ago, which always makes me suspicious of examples in good condition.

Picking out the Nuggets

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Down to the museum tonight and three short talks on aspects of WW1 history. There is always something new to be extracted from talks, and in this case I came away knowing that the Germans only built 20 tanks in the war but captured over 100 of ours and used them against us. Strange, when you think how keen they were on them in the next war. We seem to have scrapped most of them after the war. The Imperial War Museum had one but scrapped it in 1922 and the Americans had one but scrapped it in 1942. That leaves just one survivor, which is in Australia. With hindsight it seems a strange way to treat  an historic vehicle, but I know we also scrapped several of our own in WW2 as we needed the steel.

Julia’s grandfather was a tank crewman in the Great War and survived without a scratch, only to be badly injured in the Coventry Blitz as an ARP Warden, as I’m sure I have mentioned before.

The one that should have been the most interesting talk turned out to be tinged with modern politics. Now, I don’t mind parallels being drawn, but sneering at  the people of 1914 for interning enemy aliens seems a bit rough. It’s easy to be wise in hindsight. Anyway, he clearly hadn’t done all the background research that I have when researching medallions and enamel badges – no mention of nationality legislation, or the Anti-German League, amongst other things. There are great gaps in my knowledge, as I am always aware when listening to specialists,  but it just shows how much you can learn as you potter about picking up snippets of information here and there.

To make it even better I had another acceptance today, which rounded things off nicely.

Robin. I went for a couple of old favorites tonight.

Bridges, Birds and Big Boys Toys

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Two views featuring the same bridge

Last night I started typing, got as far as the corned beef sandwiches and was woken by Julia at 3.30 am. She had woken in the night and noticed that the bed wasn’t as warm or as noisy as usual, and come to look for me. I was asleep in my magnificent office chair. I knew it was a good ideato buy a good one.

I don’t remember feeling tired, I just fell asleep mid-blog. I will continue now, using the lines I had already written.

In the 24 hours prior to the events I have just described, I had written 33 haiku and 9 tanka. It doesn’t sound much but it felt like my head was being crushed. I’d also dealt with several emails, written 1,000 words on Prime Ministers who were shot and done the normal sort of cooking and washing up.

Heron waiting to have a poem written about it

Many of the poems will be deleted, or heavily edited, but the purpose of the quantity is practice and defeating the inner critic. Once you have the material you can carve it into shape, but if you keep telling yourself it is not good enough you never have anything to work with..

The corned beef hash from Sunday became thick vegetable soup for Monday night, and thin soup for Tuesday lunch. The thick soup was accompanied by bread from the bread maker, and the two soups were accompanied by corned beef sandwiches using the rest of the bread and  carefully stretching  the corned beef by keeping it chilled in the fridge and cutting it thinly.

Between falling asleep and being woken by Julia I found I had had an acceptance from overseas. That’s two from last month’s submissions, and it was a good way to start the day. I use the term loosely as, when you use email and have an international reach, every day is a new one somewhere and where it starts and ends is just a constant process of change.

As an example of editorial opinion, the piece I had accepted last night had been rejected just weeks before by another editor. It was, I thought, the weakest of the three I sent out this time, which just goes to show that you never can tell (to quote Chuck Berry).

Flying Scotsman

Swinging Feeders

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There seems to be a problem loading the photos in this post, which may make the first line slightly puzzling. If I refresh, it comes right and makes sense. 🙂

I swear there was  a Great Tit perching when I pushed the button

First – an acceptance. It’s a good start to the day (it was waiting when I switched on my emails) and it’s a good start to last month’s submissions. The normal caveats apply – past performance is not a guide to future success, one day the illusion of my talent will fall apart, and, mostly, I have submitted to a magazine I have never submitted to before and three editors that have  always rejected my work, so there could be tricky times ahead. However, for now, I have a smile on my face.

See – there was one

Julia got up early and went for a run. She is finding retirement hard as she hasn’t enough to do and she has nearly worn the new floors out with sweeping, hoovering, mopping and polishing. I feel sorry for them. While she was out, I took pictures of several birds, but mainly just the recently vacated feeders. When the Blackcap came it fed from the opposite side of the feeder so I couldn’t get a decent shot and, later, when the Long-tailed tits arrived, I had already taken the camera away.

Breakfast was ready for her when she got back. It was only cereal and toast but it’s always nice to have something ready to put on the table on her return. At our age these things are just as important as chocolates and flowers. In fact, a healthy breakfast is better than chocolates.

That was a blue tit a split second previously . . .

On that subject, I note that our breakfast blueberries came from Morocco. Last week they were from Peru. It’s good to have healthy food and a good variety, but it does make me worry about my carbon footprint and whether my breakfast is contributing to the end of mankind. It could, I suppose, be worse. At least no pigs are harmed in this sort of breakfast.

I’m currently in the middle of writing submissions which need to be done by the 15th, but with twelve days to go, the sense of urgency has not yet cut in, and I am finding it hard going.

And that used to have a blackcap on it

It’s a bit like homeopathy, my photography, pared down and diluted so that only the suggestion of a possibility of a bird remains.  Or “inept” might be the word I’m looking for.

 

Good News Stories

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I wrote a couple of posts for yesterday, but decided not to use either of them.  After that I pottered about on the internet and forgot to post anything at all. Today I haven’t done much either. It’s 1.30am and I am only just sitting down to do some blogging work.

Last night I had a poem accepted for Cattails. I didn’t get round to submitting anything for the last issue so even though I was struggling last month I made an effort to submit some haibun and some tanka prose. I have had a haibun accepted. It needs a different title, which I’m struggling with, but apart from that it’s all good. This means I’ve had two acceptances from three submissions, which is good.

10p – B is for Bond

On that subject, I’ve just had one published in drifting sands haibun. I’m on page 42, with The Thoughtful Pig. 

I’ve been wandering around the internet searching fro inspiration and notice that Nigeria entered the track cycling for the first time at the Olympics. It was a last minute thing, as places suddenly became available, and they had no suitable track cycles. The Germans lent them one for the race, which was kind of them, and a throwback to the South Africans and Eric the Eel. It’s good to see, amongst all the politics, technology and money, there is still time for a heart-warming story.

The backdrop of Paris has made this a memorable Olympics, though the lack of VAR in the clay shooting, the gender confusion in women’s boxing and the pollution in the Seine have all detracted from the event.

10p – P is for postbox

As for the results and our place in the medal table, it’s been a bit disappointing as we have constantly come out on the wrong side of narrow margins and haven’t quite performed as the pre-games hype suggested. We did, however, have a 51-year-old skateboarder. At the time I thought he sounded a bit American. It turns out that he lives in America, was born in America, but has an English dad. However, nationality and athletes is a complicated subject and I don’t have the time or the enthusiasm to go into it now. It was good to see someone doing it for the enjoyment and he was quite clearly enjoying himself.

10p – F is for Fish and Chips

More Good News and Some Trivia

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This is the Sunday post I prepared then forgot to load.

The news so far is that I had a tanka accepted on Saturday and a Haibun accepted tonight (by an editors who has been known to reject me, repeatedly, in the past). That is four acceptances from eleven submissions and I am feeling happy. Editors in Japanese style poetry are far more industrious than regular poetry editors, though I suspect that they aren’t hit by the same avalanche of hopeful poets. I’m still feeling slightly comatose after the efforts of getting all eleven submissions out, so sorry I haven’t been reading other blogs.

Talking of editors, one replied within the day and the other three averaged about four days. This is good, even by the standards of the genre. I expect they will all be in within two weeks, leaving just the two traditional magazines to reply. One will take a couple of months if they run to form and the other tells me that if I don’t hear from them after 12 weeks I can assume I have been rejected.

You can see why I am more enthusiastic about writing Japanese style poetry, can’t you?

Meanwhile, in pursuit of other things I have been adding to my store of general knowledge. The body of Napoleon II, son of Napoleon I and cousin of Napoleon III was originally buried in Austria, where he had lived in exile with his mother since the defeat of his father. He reigned twice, once for two days after his father’s initial defeat and once for 15 days after Waterloo. To be fair, his father’s wish for him to succeed was never going to be granted by the allies, and at the age of three he wan’t in much of a position to dispute the decision to depose the House of Bonaparte. He died young, in 1832 and remained in peace until 1940 when Adolf Hitler stepped in and ordered that the remains should be sent to Paris to be interred in the tomb of his father. His heart and viscera remain in Vienna, which is a tradition of the Hapsburgs.

At least the treatment of his body parts has been more dignified than that of some of his father’s parts.

A Seasonal Jay and a Lost Coin

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We saw a Jay on the way to work yesterday. It swooped from trees by the side of the road, flew in front of us and dropped into a park on the other side of the road. They are both colourful and unobtrusive, being quite a shy bird. This is the time of year to see them as they collect acorns and stash them away for future use. It’s not the first time we have seen a Jay at that part of the journey as they live in the park, but they rarely show themselves..

This morning I had an acceptance for the revised haibun, which was good. I’m always slightly wary of edits, as I may have said in  previous posts, but this one seemed to work out alright. I try to do what editors ask, as a second pair of eyes can often see what I don’t, and they are helping me for free. There are several possible pitfalls, but we seem to have avoided them.

The owner has been away for the last two days. It’s always relaxing, but it is also frustrating because we end up having to stop what we are doing to deal with customers. At that point you appreciate what he does in the course of the week. I am trying to get things loaded up on eBay but people keep ringing and visiting and generally stopping us working. I’m used to the phone calls because they are a normal part of my day, but I normally rely on him dealing with customers.  It just goes to show what a finely balanced machine the shop really is.

It hasn’t helped that we’ve found it hard to locate a number of the things we have sold. Once you lose one coin in a coin shop it can be quite a performance finding it again and it can take several hours out of the day. It always annoys me when that happens because time is money, as they say, and if you spend an hour looking for a £6 coin there is no way you are going to make a profit. It’s one of those cases where spending five minutes on filing and labelling would pay for itself. Fortunately we are all as bad as each other when it comes to losing things so it doesn’t seem so bad.

British West Africa 1/10th of a Penny