Spring is almost here

And change is in the air, on a personal level too. I am keenly anticipating both and hope to write more about this very soon.
In the meantime, the air is finally, slowly warming up and the blackbirds are fossicking. I hope the solitary bees I saw last week made it through the cold snap, and the small charm of goldfinches. I hope the tiny clouds of insects are more hardy than their appearance may suggest so they can nourish the birds. I feel that nature is more resilient than we might understand.

Anyway, I was delighted to be a guest poet in Ash this month - the Oxford University Poetry Society's magazine. there are some wonderful poems in there and I love the way it has been bound and folded on creamy paper. It was pleasing to share a couple of new poems - Mind and Ash.

*

It was also good to hear that the poet Josephine Corcoran had taken my poem 'Fair Maids of February'  into the school in Bath where she works as a writer-in-residence and the students had responded to it by feeling they, too, could stop and stare at living things.
Josephine also brought in the anthology Weeds and Wildflowers by poet Alice Oswald including one about snowdrops in which she compares them to girls. I am glad I didn't know Oswald's poem as I think it would have stymied my own snowdrop girls had I known she had already captured them so beautiful in that way. As it is, I think there is room for as many variants of snowdrops biologically as poetically

You can read Josephine's blog post here - and I recommend the rest of her blog too for a very honest, open-hearted and encouraging view of the world.

https://josephinecorcoran.org/2018/02/11/writing-poems-about-flowers-writerinschool/


*
It has all been reasonably quiet on the poetry front. I had a rejection from Magma - the film issue - they said I was on the long-list of 200 out of over 4,000 poems. Actually I am glad they rejected my poem as I don't think it was ready and have since revised it - this is a foible of mine to send things off before they are quite ready. Or 'cooked' as Andrew Motion used to say (a phrase I never fully liked, not sure why). I have sent a couple of things out here and there but I think my focus now is on creating new work - although time and head-space have been somewhat occupied.

I finished Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor last month. It is exquisite. Also enjoying the work of Selima Hill for her wild, reeling image and the verse-novel "One' by Sarah Crossnan which is extremely emotive and beautifully constructed.
Until next time. Thanks for reading.









The view from the top of our house, mid-March







Comments

Popular Posts