Tag Archives: poetry

Tales of a Small Rabbit

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I’ve not quite made up my mind about my new blogging routine, but I am going to keep to the one a day (on average) plan until the end of the month. I’m thinking I may drop back to a couple of times a week after that. Half of me says that there is no need to change, as 250 words a day shouldn’t be a challenge. The other half of me says that practising longer pieces will be good for me and I should give it a go.

Whatever happens, I do know that I had a rejection yesterday. Rattle magazine runs a monthly ekphrastic poetry competition, amongst other things. It’s a good way of getting my submission numbers up, and giving myself a new challenge. So far, it’s also been a useful lesson in rejection, with me achieving a perfect record of three rejections in three attempts. I don’t mind these rejections, because they reject the poems because they aren’t good enough. Yes, I’m still banging on about editors who reject decent poems because they don’t match up to some wrong-headed vision of what a poem should be.

I will not go further along that line as it’s difficult to explain without becoming tedious. I’m thinking about this more and more because it’s coming up to the time when I will have to select a poem for a best of issue tanka, and I’m still not sure how to do it. I think I’ll just select the one I like the most and be honest about it. I’ll leave scholarly comment to other people.

Meanwhile, I just had two acceptances to balance up the rejection, and we had the woodpecker back on the feeders this morning. We have also got a small rabbit in the back garden. We aren’t sure how it got in, but are hoping it will be able to get out the same way as I wouldn’t want to see it trapped. It seems to have burrowed into the compost bin in search of vegetable scraps, but am not sure there is enough food in the garden to support even a small rabbit. The photo isn’t good, but it was done on a phone and enlarged without mercy.

It’s been a good time for wildlife – all the fledglings, the woodpeckers, a rabbit, a sparrow and the return of the goldfinches.

 

The Devil’s Darning Needle

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I had another acceptance yesterday morning, and am feeling slightly fraudulent. The three acceptances I have had recently come to 80, 15 and 6 words respectively.  I can just about make out a case for thinking of 80 words as a submission, but when you get down to the shorter poems I begin to wonder. Be honest – what sort of poem is six words long?

Damselfly at Wilford

I know that’s the format, but it sometimes seems like haiku are just a con trick. A good one is like a flash of lightning, but most of them aren’t that good.  Even worse, if you read a translation of an old classic, they are often dull and pointless. Of course, most of mine are rejected, so that puts me firmly in my place – I can’t even write an acceptable example of a short, and often tedious, form.

I’m not sure whether this makes me an original thinker or a philistine. Or possibly a heretic.

Meanwhile, we have had woodpeckers in the garden again. We also had a sparrow, which is unusual for us. It’s a little brown bird, which used to be common but is now very patchy in its distribution. This is the first one we have had in the garden at this house.

While I was waiting for a car to take me to the garage to pick my repaired car up (that noise you may have heard earlier was my heart breaking as I opened up my wallet to pay for the new clutch) I noticed three damsel flies flitting around the front garden. I’m sure they were Common Blue Damselflies. One female, two males. Or one female and one male twice. It could be either. The males are blue. A lot of damselflies are blue. It’s very confusing.

Damsel Fly – Wilford

I like the name devil’s darning needle. I don’t use it because damselfly is shorter and I’m lazy. I’m also concerned that using the name devil will endanger my status as an atheist. I don’t generally discuss religion because, like politics, nobody is going to change their on the subject, but when I see some of the things that are happening around the world, and see religion being used as an  excuse, I would like to distance myself from them.

It may be that when I die, I will find I am wrong and will have trouble explaining myself, but I feel it is unlikely. However, if there is an afterlife and all that goes with it, people who have been murdering babies in the name of religion will, I hope, have an equally hard time.

Dragonfly

Following Up and Bits & Pieces

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I was recently asked for a description of various forms of Japanese poetry. I think you should find all you need here.  There are links in that one, which is about tanka and tanka prose, which will take you to haiku and haibun. One of the tanka links no longer works. If I remove it I them have to change the text, so am leaving it as I am short of time and am not a perfectionist.

The real way to write poetry of any type, as I have said before, is to pick up a pen and start writing. Eventually it will need typing but you’re a blogger, so you can already do that. Then email some off to editors.

If they are accepted, you are a genius. Well done, come back and tell me how you did it. Then tell everyone you learnt it all from me.

If your initial poems are rejected, join the club. Write some better ones and send them off. Each rejection hardens you up to cope with rejection, so failure is useful.

This year I have made 44 submissions and have had 18 acceptances, 17 rejections and have 9 answers pending. It’s not such a good rate as last year, but I’m writing to more places rather than just the ones that suit me. The point is to do something new rather than rack up an impressive ratio of accepted poetry.

Orange Parker Pen

I am, as i have said, looking at changing things round a bit. It may not see me improving or becoming more successful but it will get me out of a rut and make me use my brain differently.

Meanwhile, Sunday brought two emails, one accepting a haibun and one accepting a haiku. The ones that weren’t used (six haiku and two haibun) can go into the submissions for the coming month.

I need one lot of 10-15 and one lot of four for the 15th of the month. I now have enough. It’s a help and takes some of the pressure off.

Having said that, I just went to look at what I need to do. Even with this progress I still have quite a lot of work ahead of me. OK, I have three weeks to do it in,  but I am at a funeral in Norwich later today and on Thursday I will be messing about delivering the car for repair.

My Orange Parker Pen. I just wrote a poem about it, as all my hints to parker have come to nothing. It was rejected. So I sent it to somebody else.

 

For Want of a Keyboard . . .

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Yet another post that was started one day then ignored until the next . . .

I sent a poetry submission off last night. This morning, just nine hours later, I had a swift rejection. One of the problems was that I’d said, in the covering letter, that I had used AI. What I meant to say was that I had not used AI. Editors like you to say that these days. I can’t really blame this on my age or tiredness as I wasn’t tired and am the same age, to within a few days, to when I sent off several properly worded submissions. Unfortunately, as my fingers dance over the clapped out keys of my keyboard, they seem to miss things out. Sometimes a letter, sometimes a pair of letters, sometimes an entire short word. When it’s a complete word I often wonder if it’s my brain or the typing, or the keyboard which should take the blame. I’ve decided to invest £12 in  a new keyboard and find out.

Unfortunately, he then followed up by telling me the poetry was “safe” and gave the feeling that I was “ticking boxes”. Whether this view was informed by his unfortunate belief that I had used AI, or it really is so bland, I don’t really know.

I suggested that I could maybe make the poetry more “raw” as requested by making the old man in the cafe swear a bit more, mention his PTSD in verse two and add a fith verse that shows him vaulting across table to disembowel an annoying child with a plastic butter knife.

Julia said she wasn’t quite sure it was the right thing to suggest as it might be seen as sarcasm rather than a serious attempt to regain my artistic integrity.

That’s what she meant anyway.  What she actually said was “No. Don’t.”

So I wrote, explained the typos and told him I would take his comments on board.

I won’t, as they are all decent poems, but it doesn’t pay to upset editors.

Photos are from yesterday when a nestful of blue tit fledglings descended on the feeders. Current RSPB advice is that we shouldn’t feed birds in summer as it spreads disease. However, we wash the feeders regularly and are feeding several families of fledglings – blue tits, great tits and starlings. It’s difficult to know what to do for the best.

Of course, the pictures never come out as well as they could do, as the birds are all greyish instead of blue, white and yellow and I never manage to get more than three in one shot.

Some Meandering Thoughts on Poetry

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The 27th already! What appeared to be “plenty of time” last week has slimmed itself down considerably. I will be Ok, but an extra week would be handy. The three rejected haibun are, I have decided, going out again with a couple of words tweaked. I’m happy they were good enough for an acceptance last time out. It is just, as I have found before, that some editors don’t like my style. If I was a bad writer, everybody would return my work. If I were a patchy writer of variable quality, all editors would reject me at some point. Generally that doesn’t happen. Some editors accept me. others reject. Once in a while something will be rejected unexpectedly, but that can usually be put down to (a) it being a bit too obscure or (b) rushed and not good enough.

In an ideal world I would, I suppose, be able to write to a quality that it was impossible to reject, or would be skilful enough to appeal to all readers. So far that hasn’t happened, though I continue to practice writing with the aim of global domination.

Allysum with ladybird

However, I have just looked through the index of a recent magazine. and looked for the names of the three editors who have recently rejected me. They aren’t in. It could be that they didn’t submit anything, or it could be that they were unsuccessful. It’s difficult to tell, but I do know that one of them has written on the subject of how many times they have submitted some poetry before it was accepted. That article was why I always give poems a second and third chance.

It’s a bit like writing long pieces of text – much of the work and skill is in the rewriting. With poetry, much of the time is used in post mortems of returned submissions. To be a good writer of haibun, it’s not enough to write well (which is hard enough) but you have the suit an editor, follow fashion (without being hackneyed) and do a number of other things I haven’t grasped yet. I know that sounds strange, but it’s all part of the constant learning process – the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns of poetry

Photo by Stas Knop on Pexels.com

The Best Words in the Best Order

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‘I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is prose; words in their best order; – poetry; the best words in the best order.’

S. T. Coleridge

Yesterday I read the words of an editor on the front page of their website. It seems that running a magazine is hard work and takes a lot of time. I had never imagined otherwise. I base this on the fact that I spent yesterday pushing words round paper. By the time I had finished I had taken three unpublishable poems and turned them into one possibly publishable poem and two that were better than when I started on them.

 

Poetry takes time. Lots of time.

I read some background, cogitated, deleted a few words, added a few words, deleted them, went back to the first version, and, in a flash of inspiration, deleted the first verse and the last verse and carried on messing with words.

Then I moved on to the next one . . .

The tricky thing I find, is that it’s surprisingly easy to alter something and make the poem worse.

Sometimes, when I’m in full flow, I can write a whole poem and it doesn’t need altering. I wrote one like that once and it was highly commended in a competition. I need to practice more and try to get back to that.

One of my free verse poems, when edited, turned into a haibun. Not quite sure how it happened, but it just seemed to fall into shape as I edited. It might be similar to what sports coaches call “muscle memory” – I’ve written so many haibun that I can’t write anything else. That’s unfortunate, because, as a previous editor pointed out recently, I can’t write haibun. 🙂

I’ve used pictures of Julia’s woodturning, because it’s very much like poetry. You start off with hope and a battery of skills and, if you are lucky, you end up finding something that is better than you hoped.

Feeling Pleased with Myself

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I am sitting here, and I admit that I am feeling smug, I have just sent off a first free verse poem since spring 2023. In some ways it isn’t a long time, but it was long enough for me to lose the knack and it has taken a couple of months to get back into the swing of it.

I must have spent a month or so wondering if the skill was ever going to come back. But if you keep writing, even if it is rubbish, you eventually get back to something usable.

This, however, is as far as it goes for now. There is a lot more competition for space in traditional poetry magazines than there is in the word of haibun and tanka and it could be some time before I see anything in print. At least I’m pushing up my number of submissions for the year.

It’s important to submit as part of the process of learning to do better. As I have said in earlier posts, I am poor at writing haiku. I’ve always struggled and although I don’t particularly like it as a form, I feel I should practice haiku to improve myself, and to improve my haibun. You don’t improve at anything by only doing the easy bits.

This one is The Prince and the Orange Toad. I have two characters in mind. One will be a handsome Prince, willowy and thin. The other will be squatter, and with an immense self-satisfied grin. I’m not sure how it’s going to progress yet, but that doesn’t matter, because we all know I talk about more projects than I ever begin.

Finally, three views of a small bowl that Julia has done using a piece of wood that somebody gave her.  It’s her first bowl, it’s quite small and it is designed for putting rings in at night. It has turned out to have a very interesting grain pattern, and the inside reminds me of the Time Tunnel.

 

Sotheby’s Surrealist Auction Sale

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Sorry I’m so late. I wrote some poems, cooked a massive pasta bake, read some poetry, did some research, engaged in small talk with No 1 Son and my sister and generally lost my grip on the day.

So the poetry I mentioned did not get posted and when I go back to yesterday’s post I will have to add a note to say I was late.

Here it is, first published in Quail Eggs Issue 3 December 2025.

If you have a few minutes go and have a look. It is a pleasant, peaceful place. Just in case you are like me – click on he bars o the left of the title and everything opens up. I confess it took me a while to work it out.

Sotheby’s Surrealist Auction Sale

Blue, orange, yellow, red – Warhol’s copy of The Scream. I could do that. Make a copy, steal his inspiration, expending no imagination. Was there a class at art school called Copy Campbells Cans and Make a Mint? The road to Hell is paved with good imitations.

Warhol’s version has an auction estimate of £2 – £3 million. Mine, I expect, would do to line a budgie cage or two. I can see it now, a captive canary – they are easier to paint than budgies – with my copy of The Scream and melting pocket watches draped around the place. Collectors with fortunes bid on a print of a stolen idea. Sensing value in something mere mortals cannot see.

The bidding dies, a new Lot is announced. A porter shows off an empty coat hanger.

“Lot 164,” the auctioneer intones – “The Emperor’s New Clothes . . .”

as a child
I wondered if my blue
was the same as
other people saw
sometimes I still do

More Speed than Usual

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Flying Scotsman at NVR

10.45. This is the crossroads of the day. Yesterday I chose to research and write articles, interspersed with reading blogs and replying to comments.  A poetry book arrived, which I skimmed and found to be good. I collected Number One Son from the station – we had tea and watched TV and caught up. At midnight I found myself lacking a blog post. Such are the choices we make. However, I did find time to read some articles on writing haibun. I have made notes as part of my new self-education attempt.

Unfortunately Mallard is not at NVR.

Today I have choices to make again. Julia and No 1 Son have gone off to town. They are travelling by steam railway, as the NVR passes within a few hundred yards of the house and goes all the way to Peterborough.


Photograph is borrowed from Country Life magazine website and Courtesy of The Estate of Steve McQueen/ Sotheby’s.

So, do I fritter my time away or do I set to work and produce something useful? Whilst searching for the NVR site I already browsed and found some new information. Checking the link for the book I noted a couple of openings for poetry submissions. Then I noticed that Sotheby’s are holding a sale of important watches. They don’t seem that important, though they are all well beyond my budget. One, worn by Steve McQueen in Le Mans, comes with a filing box of correspondence and provenance and the upper estimate is $1,000,000. That’s a lot of money just to tell the time. And it’s a lot of money for an undeniably ugly watch.

However, as a piece of film history, and part of the story of a 20th Century icon, it is also a priceless relic. Pricing, as we always said in the antiques trade, is as much art as science. Well, I did, I’m not sure about the rest of them.

Give me a million dollars and I’d be happy to go on a round the world cruise with a £10 watch. The cruise would be so much more relaxing if I didn’t have to worry about losing my watch or having it stolen.

The next post of the day will be a haibun on the subject of auction sales. (Sorry, the day got away from me and it was posted in the early hours of toady, which would have been “tomorrow” when I originally posted about “The next post of the day.)

Photograph is borrowed from Country Life magazine website and Courtesy of The Estate of Steve McQueen/ Sotheby’s.

Thinking About Doing Something

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Nothing happens, they say, until somebody sells something.

It’s one of those glib one-liners they use in sales training. However, it’s true. Nothing happens until you do something. Whether it’s the glorious poetry career that is waiting, (if you can manage to send off that first submission), or one of those numismatic articles I keep meaning to write, it’s true. Nothing will happen until you do something.

So I wrote a paragraph about doing things.

Then I looked at details of a number of poetry magazines. It started as a list of possible places for submission, and ended with a half-formed rant in my head.

There is so much detail in some of the submission guidelines. Some 10 point, some 12 point and quite a few don’t mind. Some Times New Roman, one I hadn’t heard of and quite a few don’t mind. Several are still only accepting postal submissions. One explains why it is easier for them to read and digest. What they mean, I think, is that it cuts down on submissions. Or they hate trees.

Generally I avoid these as I still don’t have my printer set up. I really should do that, but I would probably still avoid these magazines. One has published me in the past, but email submissions are so much easier.

I realise that poetry editors are unpaid, and that they are snowed under with submissions, but are they missing something good by making their submission procedures overly complex?

One of the coaches at Newark RUFC, an excellent club that Number One Son played for briefly, once expounded a theory of recruitment to me. It was in relation to one of their age-groups, which was led by an ambitious coach who tried to relive his imagined past glories by bossing kids about. He poached players from surrounding teams and then decided to stop signing new players.

How, the other coach asked, did you know that you weren’t turning away the next Dusty Hare?

That’s a good point, Make it difficult and you might put off a nervous genius. Even if you don’t, is it (rugby or poetry) about finding talent, or about helping people be the best they can be?