Tag Archives: published!

Quite a Good Day

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I’m on Page 42 of Failed Haiku this month. I still have difficulty seeing a three line poem as a poem. It’s a senryu, by the way, slightly fewer rules than a haiku but still three lines. You can also write them in one line, but that requires more skill. This is all part of my positive thinking mode – I decided to make sure I got more haiku/senryu practice. that’s the good thing about monthly magazines – instant results. If my positive thinking had said “write sonnets” it would take three to six months for the results to filter back. Traditional poetry magazine can be a bit slow.

There would also be the problem that it would take me months to write one. I’ve only ever finished one sonnet. It took ages and it wasn’t very good, but it was14 lines and it did rhyme in all the right places. Even Shakespeare had to start somewhere.

It was a reasonable day at work – we had some decent orders on eBay, a couple of good customers in the shop and we bought a few bits and pieces. Not a spectacular day, but a much better one than we’ve been having recently. We even had some nice emails from happy customers. The owner had a family event on and needed to be home by 4.00 so we knocked off half an hour early. I sat down in the living room to read one of the new poetry magazines that had arrived (I’m researching new venues for publication) and that was how Julia found me when she returned home 45 minutes later. Well, I was in the chair, though technically I was dozing rather than reading. It was a very dull poem.

Home Guard Bomb Disposal  Arm Badge

The header picture shows the last pre-decimal halfpenny of 1967 and the new decimal one of 1968.  The tiny ½p is a fraction of the size of the pre-decimal ½d, but actually worth more.

The badge at the bottom of the post is an arm badge for the members of the Home Guard who qualified in Bomb Disposal.. It’s a far cry from Dad’s Army. During the war, 1,206 men of the Home Guard were killed on active service, most of them as a result of their work with unexploded bombs. The recipient’s daughter brought it in with some other bits and pieces as nobody in the family wanted to keep them.

Haibun Accepted – Drifting Sands

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One of my accepted haibun has just been published. You can find it here – as usual you need to scroll down to the name Simon Wilson. If the author’s bio is still there, don’t believe a word of it as it refers to Simon Hanson – he is more erudite, more interesting and, I have to confess, better looking. I’m quite happy with the substitution but if he ever visits this blog, sees that I write limericks, live a dull suburban life and look like I sleep in the woods, he may not be impressed.

The other haibun are all worth reading, though I must admit to being mystified by some of them. That’s why the writing of haibun is such an interesting area. There are several that I read and think “I could have written that!” but I didn’t. Sometimes that’s because I just didn’t connect something I’d seen to the possibility of a haibun, and other times it’s because I couldn’t make the subject work. I still have a lot to learn.

Some of them, as I say mystify me. I have a few things to do this afternoon, but this evening I will re-read the magazine several times and let things sink in. Enlightenment may come. Or, if there is anything good on TV, I may abandon the deep reading and just accept that I’m a Philistine.

Just in case you didn’t click on the last link, here it is again.

In other poetic news I was turned down by another editor, but as they are young, dynamic and cutting edge it is hardly a surprise that I can’t produce what they want. I did have a note from another editor, suggesting changes, which I made. I haven’t heard back yet, which is a worry, last time this happened the rewrite was turned down, leaving me with both a feeling of rejection and a loss of integrity. I’ll pretty much alter anything to get published (I am such a needy egotist)  but when you alter it and still get turned down it’s a double blow.