Edging Towards a New Year

Though I dread Christmas for various reasons, I'm looking forward to this year being over. It's been long and tough and I'd like to start with a clean slate without everything negative it contains hanging over me. I'm not big on making resolutions, but this year feels like a good chance to start fresh.

A few years ago some friends set up 'A new year, a new you', a group where we were accountable to each other for our drives to improve our health. We reported weekly and encouraged each other when we felt ourself lagging. It wasn't just healthy eating and exercise, but also kept track of our mental health, sleep routines, special projects and time for ourselves. I feel like I need to do something like that again, to make an attempt to focus my energy and limited time in the best way. I may need to dig out that old spread sheet and start a new challenge. I'd like to get back into yoga, keep up my as often as possible daily prompts for poetry, get back on my gluten free, low-card diet as it's the only way I keep control of my weight. 

I'll also keep trying to get published as much as possible. I took Robin Houghton's great submission list and figured out where I had been accepted before and where I was currently awaiting decisions until I came up with a bunch of magazines I could send to before the end of the year. I fired off a few and got a rejection after three days, followed by an acceptance also submitted on the same day. Feels slightly unreal compared to the magazines that take six months or more. Or don't bother to respond at all.  I've had an accept or two this week and my poem 'Signs' recently published in the magazine London Grip.

A new thing I'm going to try here. As part of the Hedgehog Press 'Cult' subscription, I get free copies of their publications and we're encouraged to write reviews of them. I've fallen behind, just because of life, but I'm going to try to include one or two in my blogs as often as I can. 

The first collection I read was Saudade by Nigel Kent. His poems flicker between a multitude characters, mothers of lost children, a disappointed father and son, a recovering stroke patient, the young, the old, male and female, each carefully crafted and individual. Their voices resonate, sometimes desperate, edging towards hysteria, sometimes having given up, all burrowing into the reader's mind. I found myself immersed in each character. So impressive how he managed to step into so many shoes and give us such a strong sense of their desires and frustrations. The book is beautifully done.  

And onto another week.