Translating the Cooler Winds of Summer

School's out for the summer and it's such a relief. I've left June free of trips, so the kids can relax, I can catch up on appointments, studying and house stuff and we can enjoy sleeping in. Though a week in and our schedules are already turned upside down. 

We've had weeks of amazingly warm weather, unusual for Finland. But it's gotten a bit chillier, around 15C which doesn't bother me as I'm not big on extreme heat. Anything over 21C is too hot for me. The birch pollen has eased up, so I can go out and work in the garden and allotment. I've been building veg boxes, but a month without rain means the soil is rock-hard and I can't dig to clear a space for the last one. A bit of rain is always welcomed. 

The writing course I was doing in April for the GloPoWriMo is done, so I'm in the process of seeing what I can salvage and develop through editing. But I miss the excitement of prompts and trying to find a way into them every day. I've been wandering through various poets' and writers' accounts looking for something to inspire me. Even with all my free time, I'm not writing every day, but I still manage to scribble something regularly.  

Every summer I buy a pile of books when I'm travelling. I try to get through them during the rest of the year, but there are always a few that get set aside. I've seen a quote from Umberto Eco recently about not worrying about having unread books which appeals. I think it's kind of like knitters saying they can never finish all their projects or use their entire stash of yarn, it's comforting knowing there's always something I haven't read yet on my shelves. A little adventure waiting. I try to review some of the ones that really grab me. 

I recently picked up one of the books I bought last year and haven't found time to read yet. I originally heard the poet and translator Brian Holton on the Lantern Scottish Poetry podcast last summer and fell in love with his Scots translation of Chinese poets. The way he explained his decisions as a translator and poet just captivated me and the Scots versions brought the two cultures together in such an unexpected way. He drew me into his process which intrigues me with poets and I often wonder how translators work on poetry. 

So I had to buy a copy of his work, choosing Hard Roads and Cauld Hairst Winds from Taproot Press. The collection is translations of the Chinese poets Li Bai and Du Fu who I previously knew nothing about. I've only dipped in a few times, but every poem is so fun and evocative. 'Bouzin Ma Lane Ablow the Moon' is a series of four poems where the poet is drunk and considering the moon, the world around him and being alone. The Scots translation and the theme are reminiscent of Hugh MacDiarmid's poem 'Drunk Man Looks at a Thistle' or Robert Burns. With the translation of place names to Scots it's easy to forget this is a 7th-century Chinese poet who is speaking, the situation and emotion are so recognisably modern. I really loved the melding of worlds in these poems.

Publication news: I was recently published in thi wurd's anthology, Earthly Rewards, a mix of poetry, fiction and experimental writing. It's an honour to be included in such a brilliant collection of writers in such a beautiful, substantial publication.

I'm having a lovely, quiet weekend of writing and a slow working through of small jobs. I wish you some time to yourself as well. Relish it.  

Sharing a Personal Mythology

I'd like to say spring is properly here in Finland, but experience has taught me that it may still be premature. We had 20cm of snow on Tuesday, though it took only two days to melt. The roads were a disaster because I and too many others had already changed to our summer tyres. I was luckily on a school strike, so stayed home. Today it's up to 11C and we've had sun all weekend, so hopefully we're moving in the right direction. 

I've been able to work in the garden and allotment this weekend, so I have those dusty, scratchy hands gardeners get which is a good and bad feeling. I love getting back to work and planning for the new season, but I hate the dry cracked skin. And the sore back. I've been building raised beds over the last few years to avoid lots of digging, but even just bending over to weed hurts now. It's no fun getting old. 

GloPoWriMo is almost over and I've managed to write a draft of something every day of April. A lot of it is dross, but I spent 20 minutes or so every day writing, so that's worth celebrating. I no longer struggle to write something, it's just trying to find a way into the theme or to write something I like that is the difficult thing now. I have a pile of interesting drafts and bits of poems to play with once this month is over. 

In some ways, I like that part best, to try and push my original idea into something that stands on its own. I often know what I'm saying, but sometimes it becomes wrapped in symbolism and images that others don't understand. I have my own personal mythology and vocabulary, certain words and images mean specific things to me. Some of the images make sense or are easy to figure out, but often readers won't get what I'm doing, so I need to broaden my ideas and make things work without me explaining them. 

Part of the process is adding and chipping away at my poems, playing with form and theme, another part is sharing with my writing group to see what they get and how close it is to my original idea. Or to see if I'm happy with their alternative readings. Often I am. 

I think the personal language is for myself. I feel my poems are an internal conversation that I sometimes want to share. I could be working out a dilemma or having a moan or rant or just playing with memories or wishes. If I decide to share the poems, I want them to work without me, but I don't mind if my some of my personal references are missed if the general idea of the poem still works. 

I hope the sun is shining for you. Enjoy.

More GloPoWriMo and Writing Off Topic

The snow is for the most part gone. The piles where they dump what they clear off the streets will be around for months, but out and about there are only a few miserable, grit-covered piles on the side of the road. My croci are making an attempt at popping up. The long days mean that my tulips and alliums are growing a hand's breadth a day. It won't be long before the grass greens and the flowers are blooming. Once Finland decides on a season, she's serious about it.

I've had my job confirmed for next year so I won't have to worry about that over the next month and a half. Usually, they wait until the last week, so big relief. And I've signed the contract for my summer job, so I might be able to afford to take the kids on a break in the summer. I'd like to go to Ireland, but the loudest voice is shouting for Scotland. I'm also cool with that. It's nice to start thinking ahead a bit, instead of worrying. 

I'm still ploughing ahead with Angela Carr's Songs of a Pagan Place course. I've managed something for every day this month of GloPoWriMo. Some have been crap, some have really surprised me and some have potential. It's satisfying to press send on whatever rough draft I've managed. 

Though the course is about Irish mythology, I love how my mind takes weird leaps. For the Wooing of Etain, I wrote about James and Nora Joyce, for the Battle of Moytura I wrote about a nightclub. I just read all the texts, the poems, listen to the music and then just roll everything around my head and let the first words that pop up take the lead in my notebook, even if it makes no sense. I scribble there until I see something forming and once it feels like I have a direction, I start writing on the computer as it's easier to move things about.

For the Hound of Culann theme:

a dog to fill in the blanks

a reason to come home after work
a reason to walk out 
when it all becomes too much

I'm never bothered if I go off-topic, I enjoy how the mind finds a way of saying what it wants when you give it free rein. It's often how I find out what I want to write about, what topics are niggling at me. Sometimes I get stuck on writing the same thing over and over, but it never lasts. I find focusing my writing on a subject I feel I need to approach often restricts me, the writing seems forced. Allowing ideas to flow freely brings the most interesting results. 

I've been pleasantly surprised this month by the topics I've stumbled on, but also the emotion of my writing: unexpected anger, bitterness and grief. Not always places I want to go, but it's good to give them a bit of space to see what develops. Sometimes it's touching a wound I thought healed, but maybe I need to face it one more time before stepping away. Writing helps me do that. 

Today's poem from the course that I really enjoyed is Robert Duncan's Childhood's Retreat. It seems fitting for the beginning of spring. Enjoy.

Brightening into April - GloPoWriMo

Spring in Finland. There's a sense of the mood lightening, but we've just been hit with 20cm of snow. It's supposed to warm up next week, but I'm not holding my breath. I am changing my winter tyres on Monday, so I am whispering a few words to the weather spirits to stop with the snow.

I'd forgotten it's GloPoWriMo, Global Poetry Writing Month, or NaPoWriMo, even though I've started Angela Carr's writing prompts course, A Pagan Place. I've managed to write something every day, even though I'm back to work. The course is brilliant, based around Irish mythology, but the prompts include music, other poems and stories often inspire something totally unconnected. I don't expect to continue to write every day, but I like having the prompts for the days when I do get a chance. 

In today's prompt, I especially liked this poem by Mahmoud Darwish though my writing was inspired by the Big Country song In a Big Country.  I don't usually listen to music when I write, but have been stuck on a Big Country loop today. 

My writing group Helsinki Writers has produced its first anthology of members' poetry and short fiction. We're still figuring out the technology and formats, but we're very proud of the writing. We've done other smaller activities such as writing poems for events and recording our work for and with other organisations, but this was completely our own project and, to be honest, it was difficult to organise and produce. Those who did the work were unpaid and put in a lot of hours, but we're happy with our first attempt. Please check it out. 

Another bit of writing news, my Finland-inspired poetry collection Invocation Against Winter was short-listed for the Cinnamon Press' 2025 New Voices Award. Congratulations to all the finalists and winners. I don't usually try competitions, so it was nice to be recognised. It's also encouraging since I'm still sending out my collections to poetry publishers. 

I need to go shovel my drive and soak up the bit of sun we have today. Enjoy. 

Return of the Light

I've noticed my writing follows patterns that follow the season. Winter is often a fallow period and if I do write poems they are full of ice and darkness and grumpiness at both. It's been a tough winter, twice the car's battery has drained and twice the electric car has been stuck on the driveway because it's not powerful enough to make it over the 4cm of ice. A pipe has burst in the shed and I have shovelled a mountain of snow, over and over. I hate winter at the best of times, but this one can seriously get tae as they say in Scotland, with a colourful flourish at the end. 

Proper spring is still a long way off. Finland is still buried under a blanket of snow and the temperature is currently -15C and these both show no sign of easing up. However, the light has returned. My poems are starting to show hints of hope, sun and an activity that they don't show during my winter hibernation. I'm hoping that I'll start writing more and this will help lift my mood. 

I joined Angela Carr's January online writing course and though I don't have a lot of time or energy in the week to write, I have been dipping into her prompts at the weekend. I'm also considering Wendy Pratt's What to Look for in Spring course. I often find this sort of prompt-based online course gives me a boost to get back into writing after a quieter period and I've done various courses with Wendy and Angela over the years with good results. 

I need to get outside more, but with all the ice, the world is a dangerous place. We've had teachers and students breaking and bumping themselves over the past few weeks as every path and surface is an ice rink. So I will just soak in the sun from my couch, wrapped in my fluffiest blanket with my matching fluffiest cat.

If you need me that's where I'll be today, writing. At least until the Scotland Six Nations game begins. 

I've also been listening to a reading of Ulysses by the Friends of Shakespeare and Company, the bookshop that originally published the book. It's amazing, Joyce was a poet, weaving beautiful and alive language. 

Enjoy.

  

Submission Stats 2023 - Why Try?

Rather late, here's my stats for 2023.

wrote 32 new poems              
finished 2 poems from previous years                 

9 book submissions                                        
31 magazine submissions                                     

9 magazine acceptances                

10 book rejections                         
28 magazine rejections 

12 magazines published 22 poems                                                   

21% acceptance rate

Acceptances were much lower than in previous years, but it stands to reason, I submitted less work and as a result, had fewer poems accepted.

I did try to get my collections a home. I've given up on the publisher that accepted my Scottish collection back in 2019. Every year they'd send a group apology to all their unpublished poets with vague excuses and promises to publish in in the next year. I'm not even sure if I would accept if they actually said they were going to start work on the process. I have lost all faith in them. Currently, I have no other options, so I keep on submitting.

A friend in my writing group and I were discussing yesterday why we want to get books published. He writes fiction, I poetry. I accept I'll never make any money from my poetry, but he'd like to see some return. At least, not lose money trying to get his books published. He's self-published but now wants to try magazines and other publishers.

Traditional publishing has changed a lot since I worked in it. He was talking about rights, that fantasy and sci-fi writers don't have their rights protected anymore. I have no experience in fiction, but I'm not surprised. Big publishers have control of the market and little publishers just try to get by and get noticed.

In poetry publishing, it's become more and more that the poet does most of the publicity and sales. Small publishers expect you to pay for various services. Often they don't edit the collection. 

And yet, I still want to be published. To be considered part of the scene, to be considered good enough. I am published regularly enough in magazines and journals, but can't get a publisher for a collection. 

I mentioned that I'm probably not visible enough on social media and wondered if that was a possible reason. Publishers want someone who is a voice, that will sell their books through readings, on social media. I have struggled this year with posting on Twitter. I've joined Blue Sky and Mastadon (@grimalkingerry on all), but haven't gotten the hang of them. I guess that needs to be a goal this year tied into finding a publisher.

Publication news: my poem 'The Lake Swimmer' has been published in Alternating Current an anthology published by thi wurd. And I have two poems in the City of Poets 2023 anthology. 

Slow Motion

The end of summer is always difficult, even this year when it's hung on much longer than usual. Things have been hard lately, at home, at work, with the kids, with me. I have no motivation for anything besides getting through work and keeping things ticking over at home. My new job is going pretty well, but some days it's too much, a steep learning curve. 

As a result, I haven't written much, even though autumn is sneaking in, my favourite time of year. Usually, I'm writing tons connected with the change of season, but I'm just half-heartedly editing the poems I was working on over the summer. A few moments here and there towards my goals.

I've started a series of poems on Finnish animals, really animals in Finland as none of them are particularly Finnish, hares, cranes, elk, magpies. I haven't written about the norppa seal or reindeer, animals I connect with Finland, though I might. The creatures I've chosen take on a Finnish persona, though they are animals I know from elsewhere. I'm mixing my love of nature with my focus on belonging to a place. The animals are guides, gods or representations of myself, moving through Finland with the will to understand, if not accept, the world around them.

These new poems have made the Finnish collection change again which is intruiging. Its early incarnations were about me struggling to adapt to living here in connection with my family, hanging on to the remnants of my life in Scotland. As I said, these new poems are not necessarily about accepting my life here, but more just listening to the voices of Finland more intently. Stepping out of myself for brief wanders.

All this sounds like I'm writing a blurb for the book, but it's nice to sort out my thoughts on it. And who knows, it might be useful someday as a blurb.

I'm not submitting as much as I usually do either, focussing more on sending manuscripts to book publishers for the inevitable rejection or just radio silence. I can never tell if publisher

My poem 'Sisu and Jag' has been published by Sídhe Press in their collection Glisk and Glimmer. I can't wait to get a look at it.

It's a three-day weekend, the leaves are starting to fall and even though I have a 10-year-old sleepover happening tonight, I'm going to try and chill for the rest of the weekend. Maybe even do a bit of writing. 

Take care. 

GloPoWriMo and Spring Cleaning

The holiday weekend has been bliss. I put aside anything I had to do except a first aid online course and just focussed on what I wanted. I tidied toy boxes with the kids, I worked on my puzzle, crocheted, did yoga, some shopping and loads of writing. I should have spent more time outside as it finally feels like spring is here, but I'm not going to beat myself up because I didn't. There were things that I wanted to do inside, so I did them. There's still snow on the ground here, so I can't get into the digging the garden mode yet, so I'm happy to wait. 

Week 1 of GloPoWriMo, the Global Poetry Writing Month, and I've managed something every day. Sometimes a whole poem comes, sometimes just notes. Some of the notes have been used in other poems. some will just decay as compost. I've used a mixture of the NaPoWriMo website's daily prompts and ideas from other places. One poem was inspired by a 6th-grade maths lesson I was in. I hope I didn't look like I was fangirling while taking notes. 

Today I have an online write-along booked with Jen Hadfield. It seems strange to write silently with other writers on a Zoom call. We don't interact except at the check-ins at the beginning and end. We don't share what we've written, and many turn off their camera and mic while writing. It's the booking time with other writers, with the muse to write and the shared activity. Others are with me, struggling to put words on the page, finding the gentle pressure to produce. It does inspire me somehow. 

I just hope something will pop into my mind when I sit down to write as at the moment even with a bunch of prompts in my head I'm drawing a blank. That's often how it works, everything percolates in my skull until I start randomly writing and then somehow it comes together. I see a thread and start tugging on it until the beginning of a poem unravels beneath my hand. Other times I write complete crap, but that's the risk. 

I'm feeling the need to go through my big electronic pile of poems and take out the stuff I really don't like. I could work on fixing them, but some might just be binned. Maybe my style has changed so that I can't see what I like about them before. I've never been one for binning or burning my old poems, my notebooks, my childhood scribbles, but I do put them aside and stop working on them. 

Maybe I need to do a radical version of that. Create a new file of just the poems I currently love, that I want to find a home for, that fit in a collection. Maybe more than one file then, as some I love have already been published. Some have collections where they fit, while others don't. 

This seems to be a symptom of my current spring cleaning fit, not guddling in toyboxes for the broken toys, those who aren't played with anymore, but in poetry files. That's my day planned.  

Global Poetry Writing Month - Getting Started - Day 1

I feel the spring creeping into Finland. It takes its time here, but there are blue skies above the melting snow. The warmth streams in through the windows, but the wind is still biting outside, the grass is finally being revealed, but it's gray and dead. 

I started a yoga class a few weeks back as a way to get my body into motion again after my winter hibernation. I've practised yoga on and off for decades, but with my studies, the kids and generally just being unorganised, I haven't done a class or done much at home for years. I stumbled on a brilliant class and am really enjoying the feeling I get from gently pushing myself. Afterwards, I find someplace for a cup of tea, cake and writing. However, I've been also been struggling to get the writing going, so April's Global Poetry Writing Month challenge #glopowrimo has arrived just in time to give me a creative kickstart. It is most needed. 

From past courses and challenges, I know that I am able to start a poem a day and have learned to enjoy the challenge, so this will be a way to get me working again. The NaPoWriMo/GloPoWriMo website linked above has a daily prompt which helps. I also have a few books to play with for ideas. Even if I don't write every day or write anything decent when I do sit down, I should get a few poems out of it just from that act of trying. 

Day 1 - the theme is 'to judge a book by its cover'. I pondered the idea while I swept up as I waited for the kettle to boil. My life is always a series of multi-tasking, so finding some quiet time to just think and write is unusual. And as often happens the things I was doing snuck into my poem.

Notes from my draft:

You cannot draw a conclusion

from the cover illustrations 

unread at my bedside, 

from the pile of crumbs I sweep away,

from the statues that clutter 

my never used for writing desk

a queen in dismay

a bog cat

a berserker biting down on his shield

we are all cliched

and we are all jagged

a switchback of contradictions

The line 'we are jagged' came from a training lecture we had at my school recently, referring to the fact that on any continuum or spectrum, we are never just a straight line or all one thing. You can look at aspects of our personality, our thinking, and our actions and we will all have our own quirks and diversities. I liked the idea of it, but I'm not sure how to use it yet though it seems to fit in this draft poem for now. We'll see if it goes anywhere. 

At least I've started. 

The Struggle to Return

The snow and cold have come back as I worried they would. February was snow free until the last week when we got dumped on. My kids are finally getting a chance to go cross-country skiing with their schools. That and ice skating are part of the curriculum here in winter, but they are past the point of enjoying winter activities. The light is back and we're all ready for winter to be over, but we'll spend this month crawling ourselves away from it towards spring. Everything is so gray and frozen here, it's hard to summon up much enthusiasm. 

Now my uni course is finished, I'm trying to get back into some writing routine. I can carve time in the weekends to write, but I'm unfocused. One of the paid projects I applied for didn't happen, so I'm waiting on the other and have several unpaid opportunities coming up, but instead of writing something towards them, I spent most of yesterday morning chiselling away at one poem.

I'd written a poem with a slight scientific, theme and I had been looking at the Fibonacci sequence and trying to incorporate it somehow. I discovered yesterday that there is a poetic form based around it, the Fib poem. It's a simple, non-rhyming form which appeals to me. I'm trying it with word count instead of syllables as I'm lazy and am having enough trouble making it fit without having to break it down into further complications. It's coming together, but I haven't written anything new.

I've often taken writing courses as a way of boosting inspiration and getting back to writing daily. I might look into my regular ones and see what's happening there. Until then I just need to pick up my pen and get scribbling. 

I had three poems appear in Issue 7 of Flights, an e-journal back in December that I'm not sure if I shared. It's great to be included with such impressive writers. And also in December, I had three poems published in the Sunday Mornings at the River anthology. 

This is available also as an e-book which I've never been fond of, but I'm seeing them as an affordable way to buy books I would struggle to afford or to have posted due to Brexit nonsense, so it's allowing me to read more recent books which is always a good thing. Though I've discovered that poetry doesn't always work on a phone screen, the lines get enjambed wrong at least not at the magnification I need, so will need to read poetry texts on my computer.

Back to the grind. Enjoy. 

The Keeking Light

We had a bit of sunshine this week, one whole day of it on Friday from sunrise at 8am-ish to sunset at 4.30-ish. The return of the sun is a big deal in the north of Finland, but even in Southern Finland it has had a huge impact and immediately boosted everyone's moods. It has been a very dark and dreary winter this year, not just because the sun sets early and rises so late. It's been so overcast during the daylight hours that we haven't actually had more than a few hours of direct sunlight for maybe two months. It dampens everything and everyone in the country. So one day of pure sunlight, icy cold, is like a shot of adrenaline. Even if it's been followed by more snow and overcast weather. 

This feeling that spring is possible has given me a boost to move into looking for some new projects. So I'm applying for a grant, the first time I've tried it in Finland. Luckily, this application can be in English as I'm not up for an all Finnish application. I'm pretty sure I don't have a chance, but it's good practice and I can see how the process works. My writing group is also jumping into a new phase and we might eventually want to ask for some money. We've got a great group of enthusiastic and diverse writers, so we might has well push the boat out a little. 

I haven't written many grants and I don't have the knack as some people I have met who know the buzz words, the way to make something simple sound important and impactful. I don't invest a lot of personal emotion in them, but I also don't work only as a writer, so any money I get is bonus and totally unexpected. The money for writing time is definitely needed if I want to actually put some serious effort in my worj. Currently, I fit it into the weekend, around things I need to do for my work, my kids. I'd love to be a full-time writer, but I can't for my kids' sake. I'll throw this grant and another project I've applied for totally into the hands of the Fates and take what they give me in return. 

Publication news: I'm so delighted to be included in the most recent issue of Eemis Stane, a primarily Scots language publication. The team is just brilliant and so helpful with getting the Scots in my poems jist richt. I'm still learning, so it's been great to work with them and to be included, though Scots for me is a learned language, rather than a native tongue. The scope of the magazine is amazing and global even though it's focussed on a minority language, from a sample of Catalan translations of a Scots novel to a whole collection of great Scots poems and a review of a book of Scots translations of Chinese poets. I feel like I'm a small part of a new vitalising movement. 

Here's hoping more sunshine is on the way. 

The Nights Have Drawn In

After the autumn school holiday, the light and season switch from cool, brisk and bright to dark, wet and cold. The trees are emptied and the leaves lie limp and blackened in my yard. The change feels sudden and ominous, but I knew it was coming. 

Halloween isn't celebrated here in Finland really. Families don't have a reference of when to do things like trick-or-treating so kids have  been coming to the door randomly all week. At school we have been studying autumn festivals like Sukkot, Cheosok and Kekri and the kids will take any chance to dress-up. I love that so many autumn holidays are about light and laughter as I feel like we need to store up on both as winter nears. 

I've been drawn into my Uni course, trying to focus on that at the weekends, but I managed to write a few poems during the break. I feel like I've hit a dry spell, inspiration-wise, so I'm returning to prompts from various sources. I've also been trying to write poems disconnected from my life, find a new voice and character that isn't me. It feels strange like slipping on someone else's clothes, but I'm hoping it stimulates some new ideas. 

It's also NaNoWriMo, national novel writing month, and while I don't write fiction at the moment I thought this micro-fiction prompt list a friend shared looked interesting for poets as well. So I might give this a try as well. 

This weekend I appeared on the latest episode of the brilliant poetry podcast Eat the Storms hosted by poet Damien B Donnelly. Other poets in the programme are Molly Twomey, Jamie O’Halloran, Diarmuid Fitzgerald and Janet MacFadyen and it's wonderful to be included with such a talented mix.

A little more light to keep us going through the week. Enjoy.  

A State of Doing

I came back to Helsinki in the middle of a heat wave. There's too much going on, my heart is pulled in so many different directions: Finland joining NATO, the reversal of Roe v Wade, Scotland calling for another independence referendum. Not including the multitude of events happening outside my three 'homes'. An avalanche of emotions and worries and wondering what stance I should take, what I can do.

The summer is flying by, there is so much I want to do, so much I should be doing for myself and my family. I'm trying to balance the art of getting things done while leaving time to do nothing, to do the jobs that have to be done alongside the little activities I do just for myself. 

To do. That verb seems to rule my life. Lists to tick off, the pressure of time slipping through the hourglass. Much of the pressure is self-inflicted, but I am the person in the family who does things, and makes sure they get done. It never lets up and I never get a break from the demands of things to be done. Even on holiday on my own, I was on the computer in the morning and evening, sorting things for my children or myself. I couldn't really relax on the trip either as I felt I had to do things, and see places as there was limited time and soon I'd be gone without those possibilities. 

I needed that holiday on my own as the things I wanted to do, needed to tick off my list wouldn't appeal to the kids. I needed to go to Callanish, I've been waiting 30 years, but I also wanted to wade through the boggy sheep fields to the Callanish II and III sites and the Tursachan site further away. I wanted to sit in the wind and write in the shelter of the stone, to take innumerable photos of stones. I went at my own speed, took detours to empty spaces, had hours in the evening curled up in bed with a notebook or computer, so I could come back and do things for other people: the laundry, sort school places, take the kids from one activity to another.

Writing is another thing to do, but it rarely has the pressure of being done for other people. Few would notice if I stopped writing, and no one would notice if I stopped submitting. There are no requirements that I publish, that I produce yet another poem. It is basically free of external demands and is easily pushed down the to-do list. Yet given time and space, it's the thing I want to do the most. In the summer, I make sure I leave time in the morning to write. My child-free weekends are dedicated to it, though I do need to finish taking down the old guttering, weed and water my allotment and a myriad of other things before the kids come back tomorrow. 

I accept that I need to do things. I cannot sit still for long and am always doing something else while watching TV or sitting in a waiting room. I'm better at getting on with things myself rather than waiting for someone else to prioritise jobs the same way as I do. I've learned to ensure my needs fit in somewhere along the line, pushing them higher and higher as the kids become more capable. 

Amidst all that's going on in the world, I just put my head down and plough on with life. I will do it all, somehow: what I need to, what I want to, what I have to. In my own time and way, it will all get done.

Write blog: √

I am an iambapoet

Strange to say that, but I am. And totally chuffed, but . . . 

there is an art to self-promotion and part of it is timing. I'm still learning the ropes, it's knowing what to say, where to say it and when and how often to say it. I don't want to flog my stuff to death, but I do want it out there. Hopefully, people are interested and will check out what I've linked or added. 

I headed off on a holiday to Scotland just as iamb poetry launched Wave Ten with three of my poems last week and I've been so caught up with my trip, a health scare and worries about one of my kids that I haven't been promoting myself or iamb. But here it is and it's not going anywhere, so check it out.

Fifteen poets with three poems each, in text and recordings. I'm included with such bright lights as Penelope Shuttle, Annick Yerem, Elizabeth Castillo and eleven other amazing writers. 

Please take the time to listen to my work as well as the other poets'. The editor Mark Antony Owen has worked tirelessly, fighting with the tech and the texts to put together another great production and I'm pleased to be a small part of it. So please, take some time to check out my work and the other Wave Ten authors as well as perusing some of the earlier Waves. 

Other publication updates: another one of my Wolfpack Contributor poems has just come out for Fevers of the Mind and Scrawl Place, a great location-based poetry zine, has published two of my poems about places in Helsinki, Suomenlinna and Cafe Regatta. Black Nore Review is also publishing my poem 'Obscured' on their website. 

Once I'm back from my holiday I can get back to blogging properly for a month or two before school starts up again. Lots of wee things in the pipeline that I hope come to fruition. 

Enjoy the sun, if it's round your way. 

May Days: On Strike, Out of Breath

The schools in Helsinki are on strike, so the kids and I are at home. It feels strange to be in a union and on strike after 30 plus years of working freelance or low wage jobs. Schools in Finland only had the first 6-week lockdown due to Covid, but have stayed open since, so it feels weird to shut them for this. But necessary. 

I'm not sure how long the strike will last, a week at most at least to begin with. I can't do school work and can't do much of my research project beside go through literature, but I have so much I want to do, I need to read for my course tomorrow, plant potatoes and onions, tidy the garden after cutting down a tree, clean the house (ok, I don't want to do that, but it needs doing) and write, of course. 

Vappu (May Day or Beltane) was cold as usual. We tried a picnic with our Scottish Society friends, but it was short-lived. 

The birch trees are massing to kill me with their pollen. My eyes itch so much, so the outside work I need to do will have its negative outcomes, but I need to get on. But the days are long, it's 9.30pm and the sun is just thinking about setting, so I feel invigorated, even if I don't really have the energy. A few new poems are trickling out as well, partially due to this, but also due to the kick of Global Poetry Writing Month in April.

I'll try to use this time the best I can between also having the kids home and loads of uni work to do. 

Publication update: I've had a poem 'Lokakuu, Mud-Month' published in Poetry Scotland. I've also been chosen to be part of the Fevers of the Mind's Wolfpack, a special month feature spot on the site. I'm very grateful for having this opportunity. Last Leaves has published my poem 'Finding Family' for the latest issue. Thanks to all the magazines and websites for including my work, it's lovely to feel a part of the writing community. 

A post-script: It has felt non-stop with worries these days. Climate change, Covid, Brexit, Ukraine and Finland wondering whether to join NATO and now the possible repeal of Roe vs Wade. I tend to keep away from the political here as it's so overwhelming and I need a respite, but it feels like we're sliding towards something dark and omnipresent that's slowly consuming us.

I started a list poem about the time the Amazon and Australian fires were happening, a list of 'I can't breathe' lines, each a body blow of breath-stopping events from across the world, from George Floyd to the streets of Bucha. It keeps growing, saddeningly. I see no signs of being able to stop writing it, but I need to speak up in my small way.

Take One: Recording Poetry

Autumn has hit Finland hard. I love it in the now, but it's always the upcoming season that dampens my enthusiasm for windfall apples and cool mornings. However, we're glutting on crumble, spices, the changing colours while we have a chance. 

Yesterday, I recorded a new autumn poem with my writers group, Helsinki Writers this weekend as part of a Superwood Festival project a local university has organised. It's one of a series of poems my group is providing as audio for a forest walk. I was nervous about professionally recording. It's almost ok in my quiet house with no one watching, but reading in front of my friends and a handful of students was a bit nerve-wracking. But it's a well-paid gig, so I jumped at the chance. It was a lot of fun to work with the other writers and come up with separate poems on a similar theme that worked with each other. I'm excited to hear the final project. 

Even though it was a bit strange to hear my voice played back to me, they made it sound pretty good, even in the raw form. And the experience wasn't that scary. My poem was one of the longer ones, but I managed to get through it twice and had one small mistake early on for each of those versions, so it wasn't too bad. They managed to take one line out of one version that was said with better emphasis and put it in the other take which was better overall. So I'm happy with my end.

It was interesting to write a poem that I knew would primarily exist in audio form, to think about what I could say easily and what could be understood from sound alone rather than the words on the page. I made a lot of changes once I started to practice reading it aloud, words and phrases that became tongue-twisters next to each other, images that would be lost unless given space to breathe. Hopefully, it will work, but it's hard to know until hear the poems next to each other, cleaned up.  

My writing group is brilliant, we've been sharing our drafts, conferring on proofs, offering advice, working out running order. We're all from different backgrounds, so we had one person with more experience in performance, myself and another writer have a bit of experience in reading work (though I'm not good or comfortable with it) and some complete beginners, but we all managed to do a great job and have fun. I've been talking for ages about having a workshop on reading your work, so hopefully this will happen so we can take advantage of more chances like this. I'll hopefully be able to link to the recording once the event is over. 

Other positive notes, one of my poems is appearing in the new edition of the The North magazine. The North is one of those established magazines I've been trying for years to get into, so I was chuffed when they accepted one of my recent poems. There are so many established and new names to check out in each issue, I can't wait to dip in.  

I'm equally pleased to appear in a newer magazines like issue 2 of the new Glasgow-based magazine Wet Grain. Smaller magazines offer less well-established writers a chance to shine, so I never rule them out. I like being involved at the beginning of what may turn out to be a big name later on and to follow writers from early stages in their career, but I've been around long enough to do that. lol. 

I've also had a poem published in the university-themed anthology The Worst Best Years published by Acid Bath Publishing. Fun to remember those distant times, good and bad though it's somewhat a relief that they are over and I can write about them without the stress of living them.

I'm excited to see what else this season brings. Enjoy September in its colourful glory. 

The Sealey Challenge: Days 15, 16, 18 and 21

I'm definitely not able to keep up with a book a day for The Sealey Challenge, but I've read more poetry this month already than I've read in the last year. So a successful attempt for me. I maybe need to do something similar with some of the poetry magazines I get as I can never keep up with all the reading for them either. 

It's been storming here after such a dry summer, we've been flooded with so much rain. So it's nice to curl up with poetry in the evenings after work as a way to wind down. 

Day 14: Remember, Body by CP Cavafy. I loved reading The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell once upon a time and Cavafy was mentioned many times, so I picked up the Penguin Classic mini-edition just to get an idea of what his poetry was like. 

This is a collection of short, mostly erotic poems, all tinged with a sense of longing and despair at the passing of time and the loss of loved ones. I love 'Painted Things' where he admits that sometimes he's discouraged by writing and just wants to sit and think about love.

Durrell's collection of novels echo Cavafy's Alexandria and his feeling of desperate and often forbidden love. Cavafy has lovely little touches of humour and a deep sense of the history of Alexandria running through his poems which lift them above just mere love stories. This little collection makes me want to explore more of his work.

Day 16: inside looking in by the brilliant poet and teacher Tom Leonard. I was lucky enough to have Tom read and critique my work when I first arrived in Scotland. For me, he was the epitome of Glasgow, rough but warm, honest but brutal. My work needed his sharp eye, and pen and it was a watershed moment for me with my writing and with my relationship with Scotland. 

This little chapbook was published in 2004 by the now defunct Survivors' Press as part of their daemon series. He was a first-class poet with his own style, tight, often humorous often written in phonetic Glaswegian Scots. His voice often directly addresses the reader, often harshly, demanding attention, but some of these poems are more tender than others I've read, settling down to sleep with his wife or watching women knitting. 

This chapbook is no longer available, I managed to grab one of the last copies when the editor was having a clear-out, but his collection Intimate Voices is a brilliant one to start with, but it looks like it is also out of print. His work really needs to be republished. 

Day 18: The Weight of Oranges by Anne Michaels. Rich and dense, metaphor piled on metaphor, Michaels' poems cannot be read quickly. They are long and heavy and need time to be digested. She is a poet highly aware of the poetic in the smallest moments, in rain, in different tones and textures of light, the lisp of the wind. Her poems often address an unknown speaker, so I feel a sense of disassociation as I adjust to the new scene and character, but then I become submerged in their voice and images. 

I came to Anne Michaels through her novel Fugitive Pieces so poetic and tightly written, it has the same sense as her poems, of sifting through time, memory and the layers of a connection between the speaker and the person addressed. 

I need to spend more time in these poems, to catch each image as they build upon the previous and to delve into the places the poems create. I never feel at ease in her work, aware that I am missing something, but I continue to return to them in order to find my way. 

Day 21: Nobody by Alice Oswald. A heady mix of mythical and modern-day imagery, aeroplanes and styrofoam floats on purple seas, dawn waking rosy-fingered behind net curtains. I loved Greek myths when I was young and really enjoyed the the current retelling of Circe and Achilles by Madeline Miller, so this 2019 collection by the Oxford Professor of Poetry caught my eye. This book-length poem plays with the stories of the poet from 'The Illiad' who was to spy on Agamemnon's wife, but then was abandoned on a stony island which allowed the wife to be seduced with the tale of Odysseus and his faithful wife from 'The Odyssey'. The poem is punctuation free, line breaks shifting across the pages leaving large white spaces and images that seem scoured by tides.

The sea is the strongest character in the book, its moods set the tone, but the poem says 'the sea itself has no character just this horrible thirst' and that feeling is strong throughout the book. The speakers feel like a true nobody of wives and poets, gods and sailors, it's never clear who you're listening to. The poem feels at once ancient and new, jumbled, found in pieces on some beach. I've just discovered that the book was meant to go with a collection of watercolours by William Tillyer, but I don't have that version. Shame really, as a quick internet search shows that they would really expand the poem. A captivating read.

Personal note: I've had two poems published by Fevers of the Mind poetry and art blog recently which has a nice mix of writings and reviews. I've also had a concrete poem in the second half of the current issue of streetcake. Not my usual style but an interesting experiment. 

The Sealey Challenge: Days 9, 10, 12 and 14

I spent the weekend with my writing group at a Writers Retreat. We booked a big events cottage in Eastern Finland and drove up on Friday after school. It was amazing that we managed to get 11 people together after such a difficult 18 months. We spent time sharing our work, talking about various writing issues and some time writing, but most of all we spent time laughing and sharing. It was very much needed. 

I didn't do any reading over the trip, but I'm back on the horse with #The Sealey Challenge: Day 9: Glimt av opphav - Glims o Origin by Christine De Luca, , a Shetland poet. Christine's poems are in the Shetland dialect of Scots and then translated to Norwegian by Odd Goksøyr. Christine gave me this collection when she visited Helsinki a few years back promoting a project because I speak some Norwegian and have studied the Scots language in university. I really enjoyed reading these poems out loud, in Norwegian and Shetlandic, seeing how the languages are so closely connected. Her poems examine the overlapping of the two cultures as in 'Thule Revisted'/'Tilbake to Thule' where Norwegian sailors arrive in Shetland to the delight of the locals as well as various characters, places and cultural highlights of the islands. The poems range from their geological beginnings to modern day, even beyond Shetland. 

I love that Christine doesn't shy away from mixing science and it's language with that of history and old myths, bringing Shetland into the modern age with a generous nod to its origins, hence the title. The poems are rich, linguistically, images and sounds evoking the place, the people and their stories. Beautifully crafted.

Day 10: Richard Hugo, The Right Madness on Skye. I read this book decades ago and brought it out of my loft a few years back, but hadn't gotten around until now to reread it. Not quite fitting the idea of buying new books, but I can't afford that many books just now.

Richard Hugo has an amazing sense of place, I loved his book on writing The Triggering Town which focuses more on his method and connection to location in his poems. This collection wraps his poems around the spirit of the Isle of Skye, connecting with the living and dead inhabitants, so spending time on the island in Scotland allowed him to do just that on many different levels. 

He explores Skye's history, mythology, geography, the despair still felt after the Clearances, the love of Gaelic and mysterious Celts. The image of a strange woman often pops up on the periphery of his stories, looking on in warning like Cassandra, knowing too much, but never listened to.

His poems often feel rambling, like he's chasing their ideas through the landscape until he can get to grip with them. But then he's sharing their truths with you over a whiskey. Hugo was one of my favourite poets when I was in university out in the Pacific Northwest where he was originally based and I now remember why. His honesty over his struggles and fears with his writing, his life and life in general feel so sincere and at times heartbreaking. This was a lovely reread.

Since school has started back with a rough bang, I'm turning to my collection of chapbooks I've received as part of Hedgehog Poetry Press's Cult of the Spiny Hog I joined a couple of years back. For a yearly fee you receive copies of all the books the Press publishes, and also free entry to any competition. 

Day 12: Before it's too late by Sarah P Thomson. I'm tired with my first week back at work, so I'm going for a shorter chapbook published by @hedgehogpoetry. 

I've always said I'm not a great fan of poems that work with strict forms, but I found the way the poems in this chapbook use repeated lines in villanelles and pantoums and other forms really mesmerising. How the same line repeated two or three times changes the meaning of that particular line,but also the lines around it, giving them more weight or reversing their intention entirely. Thomson's poems tempt me to want to try more of these styles, to create such elaborate layers. She touches on many subjects, but the title links them all together beautifully.

Day 14: Taxus Baccata by Patricia M Osborne. Another Hedgehog chapbook that I received as part of their Cult subscription. It's worth joining. Taxus Baccata is a collection of nature poems focusing especially on birds and trees. Osbourne examines disparate beauty and savagery of birds, magpies cannibalising a flock-mate, a swan mother and the decline of ancient trees. She mixes mythology with slow, detailed descriptions of yews, oaks, swans and seagulls. Her rich language drips with colours, textures and movement. This book is a delightful read.

In other news, I have had a poem published in Stand Magazine. I recently came across an old notebook where I kept track of my early submissions and according to that I first submitted in Stand in 1996. It's taken me all this time to have some work accepted, but I'm overjoyed it's happened and with my poem 'The Perfume of Rain' which I particularly love. So a proper dream publication. 

A Poetic Daunder - Stepping Away from the Familiar

My poems don't rhyme or at least I don't usually use end rhyme or repeating patterns. I find them difficult and forced to write, a straight jacket that doesn't allow me to say what I want. 

But, a teacher friend has gotten me into the Poetry Unbound podcast and this has set me off on a new tangent. I'm also not into audio stuff much. I have struggled to focus on online lectures, audio books, music, podcasts, becoming distracted, flipping away if it's on a screen. I listened to one PU podcast because my friend was raving about the title of the poem being a sign of a great poem, so I though I'd listen to the poem at least. 

The poem read on the podcast was Hanif Abdurraqib's 'When We Were 13, Jeff’s Father Left The Needle Down On A Journey Record Before Leaving The House One Morning And Never Coming Back' and my friend was right. The title is killer, the poem even more so. The presenter Pádraig Ó Tuama has an amazing voice for reading poetry and he brings his own gentle enthusiasm for the poems he shares. So I listened on. And again on the way home from school that afternoon. I continued to pick another episode and another and another, in the mornings before work and often on the way home. 

One day after a partially tough morning with the child I support at school, I brought my lunch up to the classroom, rather than sit amongst the noise of fourth graders in the cafeteria. I needed to calm down before the next class started, so I stuck on a random episode called 'A Poem for What You Learn Alone' which seemed to suit my mood. The poem was Brad Aaron's Modlin's poem 'What You Missed That Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade'. It is nothing about fourth grade and exactly what I needed. I think I've heard all three seasons now, but keep going back to favourites or finding one that I that I've forgotten. 

Back to rhyming poems, I listened recently to the episode about Natasha Trethewey's poem 'Miscegenation,' written in the Arabic poetic form  ghazal. I have been struggling with a poem that skirts several issues and when I took it to my writing group a couple of people said that the stanzas didn't seem connected. One of the conventions of a ghazal is that each stanza couple should be a small poem in its own right, somewhat unconnected from the next, but that the repeating phrase or word at the end of each couplet brings them back to the overall poetic themes. 

So for my sins, I tried turning my hodge-podge poem into a ghazal. It's hard work, everything I worry about with strict styles is hitting me. Am I forcing the line to fit to those last words? Am I saying this just because I need to get that word in? Can I fudge the rules of the form to make it flow more like me? 

I'm still working on it and at the moment sticking to the form as it's used in English though I'm open to colouring outside the lines if I feel it will help my poem. After a year of not writing much due to work, it feels good to force myself to stretch my poetic self and try a new style.

Writing prompt: take something different from your usual style whether it be in a different genre or just in structure or format and break it apart, figure out how it works, its rules and see if you can adapt it to your own writing. You can attempt the style wholesale or pick and choose the bits you like. Try a villanelle or a ghost story or a ghazal. Don't force it until it hurts, but push yourself to try something new in your writing. 

Book Review - Wintering by Katherine May

I have to admit I went into Katherine May's new book Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times with specific expectations which is unusual for me with non-fiction books. Expectations about what wintering meant and what I was looking for from the book. I can't remember where I came across the recommendation for the book, but idea that caught my eye amounted to learning to cope with the winters of our life and a connection to Finland. 

I may have mentioned on this blog that I live in Finland and maybe hinted at that I'm not actually very happy about that anymore. While I'm making in-roads at finding a way to get out, I came to the book with the hope that I could find ways to make my stay in this very wintery place, both metaphorically and physically, bearable until I do. 

May says that 'wintering' is those times when we need to retreat from the world. It can be for a variety of reasons, illness, stress, ect. It's listening to your body's urge to hibernate, eat heavy meals, wrap up in wool and slow down. 

The book contains many of my favourite wintery things which is saying a lot because to be honest I am not a fan of the season of winter at all. But I do love the darkness and magic of Samhain, the Cailleach, standing stones, hibernation during the cold dark months, wolves. She also looks at a few I don't like as much like saunas and winter swimming. Both these latter things are very much part of the Finnish psyche, though Finland really doesn't feature much in the book outside of this. May turns to these various things to try and work through her wintering periods. 

Oddly, it felt like she was full of energy to go off and try all these various techniques, on her own and with other people, something I think many people who need to 'winter' would struggle with, to be social, try new adventures. I realise that the events and adventures she wrote about were maybe separated by years at different periods of wintering, but I would have liked more examination of how to face the dark stillness of winter when there aren't friends around or even strangers to go stand at Stonehenge on midsummer. This would have made the book even more helpful in the last year when we couldn't go out much when we have been forced to winter and many of us found it incredibly difficult.

She considers bees and wolves and other totems to give a sense of searching for an answer to how nature copes in winter. It still felt distant from what I was seeking. I guess as wintering is such a personal need it's hard to formulate solutions that will suit everyone. 

I liked that the book did not look at self-care in the way the media portrays it of long baths and scented candles, it is about pushing oneself to face the cold dark months, to step into the liminal spaces that take us out of the rush of the everyday world. May was open to more unusual avenues. Saunas were crossed off the when she suffered from heat exhaustion, obviously doing it wrong. 

Cold water swimming turned out to be more of her thing. I have a friend who loves doing this and some day I will be brave or crazy enough to join her. But I'm a person who passed out from the cold after swimming in the sea in Greece, in June, so maybe not the best idea without a sauna nearby to revive me.

In the end, though I went in looking for answers and left without a satisfying one, I did have a sense that there were the possibility of answers in her words, her explorations, just not for me and my questions. I enjoyed reading about some of my obsessions from someone else's point of view and her attempts to use them to examine this difficult issue. Her writing is soothing, honest and, at times fun, and I was not disappointed with the book. 

In my wintering periods, I turn to writing, among other traditional things like gardening, baking and crochet. Not poems or stories, but journaling, note taking, writing around the darkness that's crowding in on me. I become an explorer through words, unable to get out into the light, I dig deeper into my mind. 

Here's a writing prompt, what is winter to you? This can mean the actual season where you live or where you grew up or winter in May's sense, the fallow seasons of our lives. What rituals or memories do you connect with the idea of winter? Do you enjoy being in the heart of winter or do you long to move past it as quickly as possible?