Tag Archives: poetry

Sixteen Swimming Swans

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Mute Swan – Rufford Abbey

This morning I thought of several poems whilst I was on the way back from dropping Julia off. This is the same time frame where I used to have all my best ideas. My brain is awake but the task of driving on a fairly clear road is not too demanding. At that point thoughts come into my head. I actually had my first idea before we left home, had a second as I dropped her off and had several more on the way home. No pad, no voice recorder, just me repeating things to myself.

When I reached home I noted the ideas down and wrote the prose sections for five haibun. That’s more than I did in the last months – the ones I’ve submitted have all been written for ages and I have merely worked my way through them without originating anything. They have had a few tweaks, and have needed a haiku or a tanka here and there, but generally all my recent acceptances have been written for months. That, of course, is how it is supposed to be. People who know these things advise leaving work to mature.

Mute Swan at Clumber Park

I just looked back and realise that I have had three months this year when I have submitted nothing and that everything I have had accepted since March has been, and been rejected, at least once.

Since this morning I have had two more ideas, though I have not settled to write them yet. Even poets have to wash up and drink tea. One of the ideas is actually about drinking tea.

Swan at National Arboretum

If you’ve ever followed my creative process you will have noticed that things change and I’m more of an artisan than an artist. I don’t really have a creative process, despite what I just wrote. In three months it’s quite likely that the reflections on drinking tea will have become a poem about eating sandwiches. That’s how it goes. That’s how my poem about two swans flying by became a poem about sixteen swans swimming, and was eventually accepted and published as a poem about a cormorant.

If a poet’s studio is a serene place of beauty where words flow and great thoughts are written in flowing calligraphy, mine is more like a backstreet workshop where power tools scream and where things are bolted together roughly and beaten into shape with hammers.

Eventually I will rewrite the one about the two swans flying by.  I liiked it and it contained an idea that didn’t work with cormorants.

Guess what the theme of today’s photos is . . .

 

Post 2 – Lists and Lost Poems

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I’m sure I wrote at least half of a second post before I wandered away. It has disappeared. Worse, I can’t remember what I said, I just know it wasn’t what I had planned on saying. Old age and a head full of rubbish. It’s not a great combination for clarity and productivity.

I’ve been sorting poetry. I have sufficient published  Haibun and Tanka Prose to attempt a poetry collection.. Unfortunately I can’t find all of them.

Three of them, I remember, and remember where two of them were published. I can probably find them. Two others I don’t even remember what the subject matter is. One  may not actually exist. I think that is down to a title change.  Then there are several others which I think were accepted but I don’t have listed. I think I just remembered where one of them is published . . .

I do need a better system. I also need to back up my computer regularly as I have lost quite a lot of information over the years. Fortunately most of it can be dragged out of emails.

Latest News – I just went to the Wales Haiku Journal and dug out two poems – one that I knew was there and one I’d forgotten about but remembered whilst writing about forgotten poems. It’s not all about numbers and I made it a policy only to count them up until I reached 100. At 100 I thought I’d done enough to show I was serious. After that it’s about quality.  I have in the past been critical of people who talk about numbers of poems as if quantity means they are a good poet. I’m only looking at numbers again because it feels like time to do a book. I’m not really driven to do a book, but it feels like something I should do now that I’m retired.

PS – Just found two that I didn’t have listed – they were two that I thought were published, but had forgotten where. Whatever happened to my memory?

Orange Parker Pen

A Sudden Panic Begins to Grow

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This morning I made a special effort – omlette for breakfast, made Julia’s sandwiches, did the washing up . . . then I tailed off. Finally, i managed to write the prose section of a haibun. As I made lunch (cheese on toast with tomato relish) I was struck by more inspiration and my lunch went cold as I typed two more. It’s hardly comparable to actual work, but I did feel that I’d made a breakthrough, and celebrated by falling asleep in my chair as I watched the news on TV after eating cold cheese on toast.

Considering  that I haven’t written anything new in the poetry line for three months, two of my recent acceptances date back to last October, and some are probably older than that, this is a promising  move forwards I have written some Facebook pieces for the Numismatic Society and quite a few blog posts, though even there I have been far from firing on all cylinders.

Visit of the Russian fleet to Toulon

Centenary of the Railways

I am also trying to do some longer pieces on collectables for the blog. It’s practice for magazine articles, which I intend to write when I retire.

Reverse of the Boy Scout Medal

Then there’s the presentation in September. That’s actually very close now and I have done nothing for the last two weeks. I am now feeling scared about that – it’s only about three weeks now and I’ve been frittering my time away without noticing. Three weeks is nothing, considering that I’ve changed the emphasis of the presentation several times and still don’t have a proper idea of the way I want to do it.

Miniature medals of Superintendent Tacey – Nottinghamshire City Police

Better finish this and get working again . . .

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

Betjeman, Larkin and Me

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So many things to write about, but I’ve done most of them to death.

Julia is having a good time and should be back in UK tomorrow. This is good as it will be nice to see her again, but it is bad as it involves a day of housework tomorrow. I’ve mostly caught up but I really ought to make it look better than it was before she went. At the moment it just looks as if it’s been tidied in a hurry and everything has been moved round.

Today’s soup was good and has all gone now. I involved more onion than usual and about a foot of celery.

Wingfield Manor – tower

I bought a helping hand from Amazon. It’s getting harder to pick stuff up and I should have got one months ago, maybe years.

Today I did some complicated things, and neglected to do some of the simpler things. I really need to make myself a list as there are things I need to do now so that they are definitely done by the autumn.

Last night I watched a programme about Philip Larkin and John Betjeman. Then I watched John Betjeman on Metroland. There’s something quite painful about Metroland. It’s partly a sense of loss, partly a realisation that even if I had tried to gain admission to it, I would not have been accepted. It is the same feeling I got from watching the earlier programme. I wouldn’t have fitted in with Larkin and Betjeman – I lack the upper class accent and the Oxford education.

A Jackdaw

Pictures are from various May outings over the years,

A Brief Outline of the Day to Come

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It feels like a poetry day today. I have been building up to it and as I only have 17 days until the end of the month, I really need to get a move on.

The last few days have been research days and I am making progress towards (a) an article and (b) the talk for the Numismatic Society. It occurred to me last night that to finish the article I will need some photographs, so that can’t be finished until I next visit Suffolk (not sure when that will be). The talk, on the other hand needs a lot more work and I need to get a move on. Most of the work I did yesterday (plus some I must do today to complete it) went into researching what will end up as a couple of minutes in the talk. That needs photos too. He was a local man so this will include at least one picture of a house he lived in (maybe 2, but I think the rest have been demolished) and  his grave. Possibly the grave of his son-in-law too, depending on how far I spread the research.

That’s another place where I miss Julia. She wouldn’t let me spend hours sitting over a keyboard, she’s make me get up and do something, which is sometimes annoying, but also sometimes a good thing. Last night, after a day tapping away with bad posture, I felt like i was tied in knots.

When I finish this I’m going to have another cup of tea and sit in front of the TV

for a while as I revert to the old ways and make some poetry notes with a pad and a fountain pen.

My Orange Parker Pen

 

The Promised Second Post of the Day

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Several years ago I was a member of the Poetry Society. The poetry in The Poetry Review was a bit highbrow for me, and I’m not very sociable so the constant emails from the local group were a bit irritating. This was particularly so as they circulated my email address to every other member of the group, which resulted in some spam. It wasn’t a massive problem but I could have done without it.

Eventually, after disappearing without trace when I entered the National Competition (members got a second entry free), I sent some submissions to the magazine. Well, you have to try, don’t you? I was rejected. I didn’t mind that, I’ve been rejected plenty of times. I did slightly mind the tone of the rejection, though I’ve been rejected in a patronising manner more than once. I’m sure it will happen again, particularity in a field where many practitioners have two or three degrees.

What I did mind was the suggestion, contained in a link, that I might like to make use of the Poetry Society’s  editing service. I can’t remember how much it used to cost, but it wasn’t the cost that annoyed me – it was the inappropriate nature of rejecting poems and then trying to sell the services of the society.

Much the same thing happened today. A magazine that turned me down a few weeks ago has just written. I can, it seems, send them £3 and they will send me the title of the poem they were interested in. And next month, if I send another £12 they will tell me why it was better than my other poems, give me their thoughts on it and, possibly, advice on developing it. They left the £12 until the end.

It may well be that I need to take advice, but it’s the manner in which it’s offered. Plus, to be honest, I have had some good advice on haibun from various editors, who have done it all free of charge. Some of them are very successful and have multiple collections published, so it’s good advice.

And that’s what I want to moan about.

Sorry if it seems ungracious to editors, but after one from a haibun magazine spent several emails on suggesting improvements (two major and several smaller ones) the other one suggesting that I should pay £3 just to find out which was their preferred poem, followed by £12 more for a few thoughts, hit a raw nerve.

I know they have costs to cover. I’m in three societies, have subscriptions to five magazine regularly buy single issues of others and buy about half a dozen poetry books a year, so I’m trying to spread a little money around. However, I’m sure that haibun magazines have just the same costs as the ones trying to charge for advice.

My Orange Parker Pen

Poetry and Vegetables

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Despite the arrival of British Summer Time, and the consequent loss of an hour, I woke feeling ready to work, and although I did waste time surfing the web and watching TV, and “resting my eyes”, I have knocked a fair amount of poetry into shape and have sent off four submissions.

I had another rejection yesterday. It was good because it was quick, and because if I intend to be serious about aiming for 100 rejections a year I need more of them. The rejected poems, with a few minor changes, are already out with someone else. They will probably be rejected but it doesn’t matter as I need the numbers, and the second submission needed little work. I feel that each time I edit a work, even if it’s only one word, I am learning how to write better.

I’m sure that I have more than this to write but I can’t remember it. In truth the stuff I forget generally isn’t that important, and would make dull reading if I wrote it all down.

We are starting to list the plants we eat in a week – one recommendation is that you should aim for 30 a week. It’s good to have a variety and I have found that shopping online encourages me to buy the same stuff each week – it’s easier to order and easier to plan the menus.

Brace yourself for a boring list.

Mushrooms. Tea. Yes, tea counts. We eat 50/50 bread so it doesn’t really count, though wholemeal would. Julia says that although brown sauce does contain spices (which do count) she is fairly sure it doesn’t count. Nor does the cereal content in black pudding. Ah well, two isn’t a bad start.

We had coffee, which counts, and green tea with mint, which is debatable. Then we had lettuce, rocket, celery, spring onions, green olives, cucumber and tomatoes.

I’m excluding chocolate because it’s full of sugar, and white flour because it’s processed, so I can’t count the crust of the quiche. Ah well . . .

That’s 10, It’s not a bad start. Only 20 more to go.Looking at the list, it shouldn’t be too hard, though it’s a case of remembering to use them. I meant to add nuts and peppers to the salad tonight, but I forgot by the end of the preparation. It’s a bit like the times I forget I’m not supposed to eat fried potatoes – they just seem to slide down. My bad memory is a cause of many of my problems.

Orange Parker Pen – a shameless attempt to get review samples.

One in Three

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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

 

Ducks and Stuff

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Mandarin Duck – Arnot Hill Park

I’ve just been tidying up my email box. Deleting 100 emails on top of the hundreds that I do as they come in, makes me realise how many I get and how much I have let things get out of hand. Recently I red how part of you can be contained in another person (the example in my case being that without Julia I would lose all memory of family addresses and dates. It’s a bit like that with emails. Much of my life is contained within the email system and if I lost access to that I would find aspects of my personality disappearing too.

But enough philosophical rambling . . .

I’m just about to start writing poetry again (having been derailed by my recent arthritis outbreak), and I was looking up an email from an editor. I wanted information about the next submission period but was hooked by his comments on rejecting my previous submission. I thought I had passed the point of being annoyed by rejection, but it appears I’m not. I don’t want to give too much information because it’s not fair to discuss editorial comments in public, but he editor in question said that the poem didn’t make sense on a literal basis.

Duck – Arnot Hill Park

If I was aiming for writing that made sense on a literal basis i would write travel guides or text books. I’d actually have a chance of making money if I did that. But I write poetry, which is supposed to be full of imagination, allusion and layers of meaning. I don’t recall ever reading that it had to make sense. It’s hard enough to write as it is, without needing it to make sense too.

That email is stored two spaces below another that complains the haiku in one of the haibun I submitted “isn’t a haiku at all”. When I look back at it, I see his point. It was written in haste as I struggled to make a deadline and I wasn’t as sharp at editing as I should have been. This comment I have no problem with, just in case you were thinking I was being unfair to editors. It is, after all, the job of the writer to write poetry of such stunning beauty that an editor cannot resist it.

And with that in mind, I am off to write a poem about ducks. I like ducks and they are fun to feed. They aren’t quite as multi-faceted as swans, but if you are writing limericks they are easier to rhyme.

Floating Feathers – Arnot Hill Park