Tag Archives: poetry

A Growing Realisation

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It’s traditional for people to be too hard on themselves. As a look at my career trajectory (which reached its stuttering height around 1988, faltered and commenced a steady decline which lasted for 38 years) will show, I’m not one of those people. I had everything I wanted and I didn’t try. Laziness and lack of ambition were all I needed, and as a result I coasted into retirement with very little to show for it but a finely honed ability for world class procrastination.

When the book is closed on my life, it will be with the phrase that often adorned my school reports – “could do better”.

Still, there’s no point worrying now.

However, I must do better in one respect. I took Julia to wood turning this morning, and, as last week, came back by a slightly circuitous route that avoided the queues. As with last week I had a number of thoughts of subjects for poems (including some of the same ones I had had last week) and realised that I had done nothing about it. I’ve written about Air Sea Rescue in WW2 and about the fate of Cromwell’s head after his posthumous execution, but no actual creative writing has been done. This is not good.

At the moment I can pass it off as a change of pace, or relaxation. I have plenty of material in hand and October is a slow month for submissions, but I really have to get a grip after that.

Does anybody want to know what happened to Cromwell’s head, by the way? There’s been a lot written about him while he was alive, but not much about him after he died. To be fair, he did do a lot more while he was alive.

 

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.

 

 

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.

 

 

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.

Philip Larkin and Moral Judgement

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He looks a bit like Eric Morecambe in some of his photos – which is probably not a good comparison.

I wrote this after watching a YouTube clip of Philip Larkin riding a bicycle. I can’t exactly remember what he was doing but association with An Arundel Tomb has always made me think he was visiting churches, even though I’m not convinced that a church features in the clip. It started out as a longer piece and I pruned it and polished it every time it came back, which was often. I think it was sent out at least four times. On the last occasion I didn’t, as i recall, do anything, as i couldn’t think of anything else to do so I just sent it straight out again and, a day later, it was accepted.

This is an example of how editors all have different views and requirements.

Meanwhile, although I have used it on the blog before, I use it here to illustrate the making of moral judgements. Larkin, you see, was a racist according to his letters. That illustrates several points, such as whether we should judge poetry through a filter of our own morality. Just because he was a racist does that make him a bad poet? And if we do decided to judge a writer by his morals rather than his writing, is it fair to judge one as a racist because he preserved his correspondence, yet to make no judgement on another writer who may have failed to preserve his correspondence?

That’s a tricky thing about making moral judgements, they aren’t always accurate – a bit like the poem, which picks and choses which facts to use. I didn’t use moral judgements in selecting the facts, just what fitted nicely into the flow.

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

Failed Haiku Feb 2021

 

Poetry and Morality?

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Don’t get excited, despite the title it isn’t a newly discovered Jane Austen novel where an opium addicted poet moves in next door to the three attractive daughters living in a Hampshire Rectory.

I decided to include a poem a few days ago when I was discussing moral judgements to be made by poets. When I discovered how many days I have missed posting recently, I decided it was definitely time, as republishing poetry is quick and easy.. I don’t think I’ve posted this one before. If I have, my apologies.

One major change has taken place since this poem was written – 18 carat gold was £38 per gram in 2023 when this was written. It’s now £72. At peak it was about £96. That’s the effect of wars, disturbed markets and political panic.

My contribution to the discussion was to say that I didn’t think it was my job to make decisions based on my perception of morality. I was then asked whether or not I made a moral judgement every time I wrote a poem.

I’m fairly sure that I don’t. This one is just a description of one line on the official documentation relating to the valuation of my father’s estate, with a couple of bits of trivia relating to death. Maybe I should. But to be honest, I have enough trouble wrestling words into a poem, without debating the rights and wrongs of it. I’m just shallow. I could, of course, write a second poem based on this one and the new price of gold, but I’m not sure the world needs another poem about war and capitalism.

That of course, was just one of the questions surrounding poetry and morals. Two others are about the morality of supporting right-wing magazines by submitting (it’s always the right-wing that gets questioned, isn’t it?), and I asked about the morality of reading poems by poets with questionable moral stances.

I will leave it there, as it has the potential to develop in a way that is neither useful or interesting. I’m off to read some poetry. Now, should I try the racist Larkin, the incestuous Byron or the fascist Pound? Even Dylan Thomas was overly fond of the bottle and committed a number of crimes against neckwear. Morals can be so confusing.

Does anyone have a view?

On Dunwich beach

 

Weighed in the Balance

The Egyptians believed that Anubis would weigh the heart of the deceased against a feather to see if they were worthy of the afterlife. Later, scientists calculated that the human soul weighed 21 grams.

This morning, preparing the paperwork for my late father’s estate, my heart skipped a beat as I saw the details of his life reduced to a weight – 8 grams of 18 carat gold at £38 a gram. That is the price set on his wedding ring, the value that the tax man places on 63 years of marriage.

his life
persists in memory
—dust floats in the sun

First published in Blithe Spirit August 2023.

Ringlet