Three of my poet & writer hubby’s poems are published in Dead Snakes this month, alongside Tim Laffey, Donal Mahoney and Jonathan Butcher.
Joseph Robert and Leilanie Stewart…writing and caffeine
Magazines, especially ezines, are a great way for a poet to connect with their audience. Many people in these cash-strapped times are looking for competitions to enter – see my previous post – though often tend to overlook magazines as a great place to be published. Continue reading
Competitions…how will you make your entry stand out?
[Updated 15 August 2018: At the time this post was written in 2015, the Melita Hume Prize was free to enter. In 2018 there is now a submission charge. Please note that at the time Leilanie Stewart was longlisted for the Melita Hume Prize in 2014, and Joseph Robert longlisted for the Melita Hume Prize in 2015, there were no submission fees to enter.]
As I have said before in previous posts, competitions are a great starting point for a novice writer or another chance to build your CV/resume if you are already established. I’m always in favour of entering free competitions. The only cost will be your time in terms of selecting your best work, editing and submitting it. Are competitions worth it? Last year when I entered the Melita Hume prize, although I didn’t win, I was longlisted which meant another opportunity arose; the chance to be published in a pamphlet series run by the same publisher. If you enter competitions, you will get exposure for your work even if you haven’t won cash prizes…and IMHO that is a bigger winner. After all, the ultimate goal for any writer is to be read, is it not? With all this in mind, here is my latest list of FREE contests for teenagers and adults. Best of luck to you!
Happy New Year! 2015 is off to a great literary start with a couple of my poems appearing in Morphrog Issue 10. Morphrog is a sister magazine of The Frogmore Papers, a long established literary journal.
Get your writing out of your head…put it on paper!
A new year is a good excuse to set some writing resolutions. The usuals are always a starting point, of course:
My last published poem for 2014 is another archaeology-themed one called ‘Reeds’, appearing in Jellyfish Whispers magazine. As I have mentioned before in previous posts, my debut poetry pamphlet, A Model Archaeologist (available from my publisher Eyewear Publishing and from my online store Meandi Books) is forthcoming in June 2015 from Eyewear Publishing’s 20/20 series.
Sunset at 4pm in Eton…but the swans don’t suffer from SAD!
The hardest part about living in the Northern hemisphere is seeing the sun set at 3.30pm, which is the case for all of us in the UK as we approach the solstice. Add to this endless grey days of no sun and what happens to the creative flow? It stalls! Does SAD affect writing output? It can do if the winter blues win over productivity.
So, what’s my solution to keeping the writing going through the dark depths of winter? Here are a few ideas:
Continue reading
This month my poem, Survival Skills, is published in The Commonline Journal. It’s an archaeology-themed poem that I wrote from a memory of my undergraduate fieldwork study days. More of my archaeology-themed poems will be published in my debut pamphlet, A Model Archaeologist (available from my publisher Eyewear Publishing and from my online store Meandi Books), forthcoming in June 2015.
Did I ever have to use any of the techniques I wrote about in Survival Skills? Luckily not, though I had to rely on instinct on one or two occasions such as a narrow escape from my trench when the concrete truck started filling the pits and fun memories of sinking into glue-like mud!
A few months back I read about a UK poet who was driving around in a secondhand ambulance and ‘prescribing’ poems to patients to fit their current ailments. I looked into this and found the blog of the Emergency Poet, which like my own is hosted by WordPress. A recent interview with the woman behind the idea, Deborah Alma, appeared in Write out Loud last week.
I think Deborah’s method of bringing poetry to the wider public is a great one. In my experience of working with children I find that of all the age groups, under tens are the most open to trying new things, including poetry. Teenagers can be of two minds. Continue reading
Every morning on my way to work I pass a man who walks along with his head buried in a book. He is so engrossed that he almost bumps into passers-by. Yesterday I noticed what he was reading. It happened to be a James Herbert horror.
Horror! You can’t beat it in any season. We might be almost as close to Xmas now as we are away from Halloween, but I’m still working my way through a list of great scary books. Here are a few I recommend:
This morning while I was on the train making my way to my day job I was reading Issue 4 of Tuba magazine, published by Inert Enigma press. I got a couple of free back issues at the Free Verse Fair in September but between working on my latest novel draft, editing my final manuscript for A Model Archaeologist and reading copious amounts of horror from the library, I hadn’t got round to doing a write-up sooner.
Tuba is perfect for a mid-range commute. The poems are short and quirky enough to keep one awake before the daily caffeine ritual begins. It was also good to be reading non-conformist poetry, deviating from the normal bookshop types. As one who enjoys idiosyncratic verse, my favourites were ‘Nonsense poem no. 3’ about ‘Mangels’ and ‘Wurzels’ by Lady June and a centre page spread entitled ‘Page for Proboscids’ which included 3 affectionate poems on flies. The only thing missing here was a poem told from the POV of a fly itself or some other such pathetic fallacy. Quick and quirky, Tuba magazine is a fun surreal read.
Been browsing this week for magazines and publishers and I came across this great poetry site. The Poet’s Resource blog publishes links to magazines and competitions on a regular basis. What I like about the site is that it promotes primarily free competitions and submission calls. If the poetry world cares more about publishing quality work than putting cash value on verse then it should make it accessible to everyone and not exclude viable entries in the name of monetary gain! Check out The Poet’s Resource for some inspiration. There’s a little something for everyone and a good starting point for all. Enjoy!
Copied from Poetry Library news:
