Six poems written overall in 2020, which is not only more than I usually write in a year, but I also feel they're some of my best work. However given that one of them spent two years being written on a note app on my phone, and the rest were written late at night while suffering from insomnia, this doesn't appear to be a sustainable practice.
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I got a bit behind on my submissions, because I was self-rejecting and not sending anything out. But poetry is subjective, and even if you've read the magazine that you're submitting to the editor is the best person to make the call on whether your work is suitable. So now everything is back out.
You'd think sending poetry out in batches was quicker and easier than sending out a piece at a time, but it's really not. You still have to check all four or five pieces to make sure you're not resubmitting. Then you have to combine them all into a single document and format to market requirements as there isn't really a standard. Now I need to Write More Poems. I bought Robert Lee Brewer's Smash Poetry Journal to help with that (he's the guy who does Poem a Day), but it will probably end up like the other writing prompt books I've bought - I just can't seem to write in them. And I started a poem, but needed to look something up in a particular book that I can't find despite the fact it's never left the house. I'll get there. While it's possible to get inspiration for poems from what's going on in the world (the news, family events), sometimes I find I need a little help to get started.
I've got a Poetry Prompt Pot, basically a jar in which I keep prompts from writing magazines, and leftovers from Poem a Day. If I'm stuck I can pull a prompt from there, although I usually pick three and throw two back. There are also several sources online. The Poetry Society has a page of prompts, as does Creative Writing Now, and Writers Digest posts up a fresh prompt every Wednesday. Robert Peake's website has a prompt generator that will provide a list of words, a challenge (eg "Refer to an an extreme or intemperate landscape" and an image - plenty to combine for inspiration. The Visual Writing Prompts blog provides a selection of image/instructional prompts based on the genre of prompt you choose. There are probably apps as well, although I haven't personally tried any. So plenty to be going on with, and thousands more at the click of a Google search. The only problem is finding time to use them all! I've done number of poetry courses over the years, so I thought I'd share some of what I've learned. In bullet points to begin with, although some of these will be worth a blog post of their own.
I've been quiet for a while. Not much to post about, although I have been writing a little. I've entered the Wergle Flomp poetry contest, and also the Mslexia poetry contest - I don't usually enter competitions with fees (not rich enough for that!) but feel the Mslexia one is worth it.
I've got a week's summer holiday coming up and am considering spending it on writing poetry. Possibly reading some how-to books since I've got a few I haven't read/finished. Recently, I picked up a book of Sylvia Plath's work and I have to say I'm not a fan. ALthough it's the complete works presented chronologically so possibly it's only the early poems I don't connect with. I'm going to skip ahead to some of the later works and see if I like them better. One of my poems sold last year shows no sign of actually being published, so I should chase that up. It's a glamorous life! My copy of Stories of Music Volume 2 arrived, and it looks great. Now it's just finding the time to read it - I haven't even looked at the poetry-writing books I posted about last time. Or any poetry so far this year. I'm hoping to remedy that by signing up for a poem-a-day by email at Poets.org. A poem in my inbox every day might be just what I need. It would certainly brighten up the working day.
There hasn't been a lot of writing this month. I finished a poem, only to rewrite it from a different viewpoint a week later. I'm still not sure which way works better. Next up, I think, is to finish a piece that's been sitting unfinished in a notebook for the last six months. I didn't sign up for an online course in the end. I've decided to do some old-fashioned book-learning instead, since I can do it in my own time and I've got quite enough going on already.
Book-wise it's either going to be Alison Chisholm's Crafting Poetry, or The Art and Craft of Poetry by Michael Bugeja, since I have both of those already. My Amazon wishlist is full of others, but I've already spent my Christmas money. Both have exercises in each chapter which will give me plenty of prompts to work with. I received an email the other day saying my copy of Stories of Music Volume 2 is on its way, so I'm really looking forward to seeing that and checking out the other work. Some of it was sent along in the proofs, since contributors got to look at the whole section their work is in, but I didn't look at the other works or bibliographies because I wanted to wait until I could see the book as a whole. Part of my first of January ritual is to clear out my old diary. This time I found the first draft of a poem I'd forgotten about, which was a good way to start the year. I've puttered with it since, and have had some ideas on how to develop it further, including a new title. Hopefully it will be ready to submit next time I have a submission day. It's that time of year again when novelists are doing NaNoWriMo and poets are doing the Poem a Day challenge over at Poetic Asides. I've done both in the past, with varying degrees of success. As in, I've completed NaNo twice but not with anything that's seen the light of day since, and I've never finished (or even got very far with) Poem a Day.
Part of it is the difference in the way I write poetry and prose. Prose needs momentum, words building on words. Poetry starts with phrase or image and is a slow process: first I brainstorm, then write out a rough draft with all the ideas in the right places. Then I tweak, delete, and reorder until I have a first draft. It can take a while to even get that first draft. Even poems I've written in one sitting have sometimes bounced around in my head for weeks beforehand. So while I can bang out a piece of flash fiction in a day, it's rare for poetry. Strictly, I don't need to complete the poem every day. I could just brainstorm the prompt given out every day, and work on the poems in December. It feels very messy as an idea though, with interrupted thought processes as likely to lead to 30 unfinished poems as anything else. So, I'm not sure what to do this November. I'd like to do something, stresses and strains of the day job not withstanding. I miss the feeling completing NaNoWriMo gave me, of being someone who could fit in writing no matter what. |
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