Primrose Mencap Garden
To be honest, my latest break was just because I am lazy. Given the choice of sitting watching TV or working on writing, I took the easy way.
The current situation is both good and bad.
One, I have just had a selection of poems turned down. It’s the last but one batch that I sent out in January. No big deal. I often get turned down by traditional poetry magazines. There’s a lot of competition with ordinary poetry and this particular magazine had around a thousand poems submitted. I will have to up my game.
Two. The final set of January submissions are waiting for a decision. They are currently on the Long List. I’ve been there before and failed to make the cut so I am not building any false hopes. They had over 3,000 poems submitted. I am not sure whether the long list is a couple of thousand or a couple of hundred. Doesn’t really matter, as it’s nice to tke the extra step.
Three. Contemporary Haibun 19 is now out. It’s been a long process from first being told by an editor that they had submitted me for this year’s edition back in the autumn. I didn’t say anything at the time because I’m always afraid that something will go wrong. In fact they didn’t select that piece, they selected another. That’s nice to know, because it means at least two editors think I’m worth nominating. It’s also nice because, as I think I wrote some time last year, after being in the book once, I felt under pressure to produce something good enough for inclusion this year. Now that I’ve put that one to rest I can relax. Even if I never get selected again, I can say I was selected twice and that tastes have changed. There are 113 poems and 32 haiga (pictures with haiku). As several people had multiple entries that puts me in or about the top 100 writers of haibun and tanka prose (though that is a subjective judgement and a number of better writers than me may have slipped through the net). It’s good to know I seem to be doing OK.
And with that thought, I’d better get on and submit some poetry.
Apple Blossom Mencap Garden
