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.

  

2021 Writing Review

2022 isn't starting on the best foot. I'm in quarantine with my four kids, two have tested positive and we're just waiting to see if any of the rest of us get it. Some of us will already miss one day of school/work when we go back next week, so I'm hoping we can hold out and not miss any more. 

I've gotten lots of little home projects done but missed the chance to catch up on things like buying new clothes for my constantly growing kids, picking up a few replacement items for the home. We've cleaned, played Uno, sledged, listened to music, read lots and spent too much time on screens. But we haven't killed each other yet. Two years of social distancing has helped to prep us for proper quarantine, though I'm desperate to get back into the world.

But this post is to look back. 2021 was a good year for my writing. I've had more work accepted than ever before, some for magazines I've been trying to get into for ages or for projects that actually paid or offered wider exposure than previous I've been involved in. 

I'm not writing every day, but I have learned to focus the little time I have on writing. Saturday is currently my writing day, though that will happen less as my course starts up. I write, edit and submit to magazines on that day, totally immersing myself in writing. I will miss having that much time for just my writing, so I don't expect to see such great numbers next year.

I will still take Friday evening for my writing group and maybe do my writing work then. Hopefully, we will find a wee project or two to work on together. 

2021

61 new poems
144 submissions to journals or other opportunities
3 book submissions

108 rejections 

5 book rejections

38 acceptances 

68 poems were published in 39 publications
21 blog posts
Acceptance rate: 26%

Compared to 2020

55 new poems

131 submissions to magazines

3 to book publishers

106 magazine rejections

4 book rejections

29 acceptances

50 poems were published in 29 publications

33 blog posts

Acceptance rate: 21%

I'm very happy with those numbers and hope I can maintain I little of this momentum with my upcoming course. 

An added note of books I've read in 2021 that have really touched me. I have run out of time to do proper reviews, but I covered these poetry collections in my Sealey Challenge posts.

Jen Hadfield The Stone Age

Wendy Pratt When I Think of My Body as a Horse

Angela Carr How to Lose Your Home and Save Your Life

A few fiction titles I have enjoyed: 

Graeme Armstrong The Young Team - this book surprised me. It's about youth gangs around Glasgow in the 1990s. It's written totally in Scots which I enjoyed, but I also liked seeing into a group I was aware of when I lived in some of the less affluent areas of Glasgow, but had no understanding of. To see these boys as something other than a threat was inspiring. The writing was fast-paced and exciting, but also really well done to keep up the Scots in a way that was accessible but also really gave a sense of time and place.  

Margot MacCuaig Almost Then is an elegantly written book about twins who struggle to come to terms with their past and the path it has set them on. Margot sculpts her prose and characters with such attention to detail and feeling, that I can see every moment. Again, it has a strong use of Scots to create a connection to place. I did put some effort into finding more Scots to read this year and really enjoyed it.

Elizabeth Reeder An Archive of Happiness is a novel that brings a complicated family together in the North of Scotland, weaving different family members' resentments, memories and hopes until they come together in an agonising crescendo. I enjoyed the format of one day broken into segments so that I needed to stitch them together to follow the timeline. Beautifully crafted. 

My course starts today and I already have an assignment and bunch of worry. So I don't expect to do anything with this blog until the next holiday, which will hopefully run smoother. 

Take care. 

The Sealey Challenge: Days 2, 3 and 4

School started for the teachers yesterday and I was more tired than I thought possible for a handful of meetings and scrapping old stickers off laptops. Back at it today, but I've been trying to keep up with the Sealey Challenge to read a short collection of poetry a day. Day 2: How to Lose Your Home and Save Your Life by Angela Carr. I've worked with Angela as a mentee and through her online courses. I've really enjoyed the courses, she puts so much work into finding poems that help open the prompts. This is her first collection. These poems show such a wide range of skills, pushing the language to carry so much weight and story. They don't feel burdened, but strong and resilient. Angela works the poems with apparent ease, I loved the villanelle 'Afterlife'. She brings to life so many intimate details that build up the layers of the poems, so reading them feels like diving. I can't wait to see Angela's future work. Day 3: Field Work by Seamus Heaney. I found this in the book exchange at my school and I don't think I've ever read a complete Heaney collection, just a lot of singular poems. I wasn't familiar with these poems, so it was nice to see a different side of the poet. I was caught out by the beauty of 'Oysters' the first poem that was quickly followed by poems about Northern Ireland's violence which obviously haunted him even after he moved to Ireland. I even enjoyed his 'Glanmore Sonnets' which didn't have the strict feel I usually find of the form. This challenge has been eye-opening: reading entire short collections of poetry gives new insight. Usually I focus on individual poems and dive into the language, but following the poet's intent of how they craft the flow of the poems as a group offers that bit more for a first read. I think I'll try to do this more often.

Day 4: When I Think of My Body as a Horse by Wendy Pratt. I've worked with Wendy for years, first as a mentee through the WoMentoring Programme and then through her courses as well, available on her site. She's inspired many of my recent poems through her prompts and helped me learn to write daily again after struggling for years with various issues.

I've probably been unconsciously avoiding reading all of this book, because I knew it would be a tough read. The poems follow Pratt's journey in hope of becoming a mother, the loss of her daughter shortly after birth and her struggle to comes to terms with her death and the fact that she wouldn't ever have another child. They are raw and difficult to read, especially if you have struggled with any of these issues.

But they are beautiful, honest and tight knit. She uses the metaphors of her body as animals, horses and hares, repeatedly, but they never feel tired or overworked. They fit each moment and the language draws you into the hope and grief, the longing to escape and at the same time be present in all the emotional turmoil.

Pratt is a superb at crafting, story, imagery and language come together with exquisite delicacy. Each poem builds upon the next. The sense of the poet being aware and present in each moment gives these poems special weight. The reader slips them on like an animal's spirit. They are a wonderful read.

We'll see how many more books I manage with work being full on again. It's nice to have managed even these four.

Corona Virus Week Three - Chinks of Light

The online magazine Not Very Quiet, a bi-annual online women's poetry journal, has included my poem 'The Wedding Suit' in their latest issue. There's even an audio file of me reading it. Sorry, I know I'm like everyone else and hate the sound of my own voice, but ouch, I'm so not ready for that. There's dozens of poems, that I have to admit I haven't had a chance to peruse yet, but it looks like a great mix from the titles.

The new Scotland-based magazine Driech has included three of my poems in Issue 2 with poets like Chrys Salt and Hugh McMillan. An honour for me to be included in their ranks and to have my work wend its way home. An issue only costs £3, including postage and a year subscription £10 post free and that's 6 issues now they've gone bi-monthly, so it's a great way to support a small magazine in these tough times for not too much effort on your bank account. 

And I've also had two poems appear in a recent issue of erbacce, the magazine connected with erbacce press which was a surprise as I had submitted them last year for their annual FREE poetry prize (still open until May 1 2020!!) and I know they didn't win that, but I didn't hear anything back, so once they announced the winners I assumed that was it. So it was a nice surprise to receive the issue in the mail this week. I guess I made a sort of long list. Read their guidelines very carefully for the prize, but it's worth giving it a go. 

And back to reality. If you had asked me 3 days ago how I was, I'd probably have broken down in tears. Home schooling is breaking me, but I've had a few days respite as the kids were away to their dad's so I've been able to catch up with my studies, go to the allotment, hang some photos that have been sitting unloved for years, do some reading and crafting and, most importantly for the blog, join in with Angela Carr's new 30 day writing challenge which coincides with GloPoWriMo (or NaPoWriMo if you insist on being US-centric) the poetry writing month which encourages people to write a poem a day. And so far because of the isolation I've been able to keep up. Four new rough drafts done and as soon as I hit Publish for this I'll start on the next one. 

In honour of GloPoWriMo, I usually include a poem by a poet I like. This time I'm including The Hill Burns by the Scottish writer Nan Shepherd. I have to admit I've never read her poems before, but I've recently started her book The Living Mountain which is part of a online read-along started by nature writer Rob MacFarlane. I  haven't been able to keep up with the read-along and discussion, but it's worth following Rob on Twitter and reading his books, he has a lovely way with words and inspiring people to explore nature and to write about it. I've only managed The Wild Places and The Lost Words (written with Jackie Morris and with her beautiful illustrations, a magical book) so far as it's hard to get his books here, but I'm in a queue of about a million waiting for his latest book Underland once the libraries reopen here in Helsinki. 

Anyway, I found this poem by Nan Shepherd and it encapsulates the feeling I get from The Living Mountain, that reverence and connection to nature, to Scottish nature particularly. It reminds me of my time last summer walking in Puck's Glen in Argyll. 

The Hill Burns

So without sediment
Runs the clear burns of my country,
Fiercely pure,
Transparent as light
Gathered into its own unity,
Lucent and without colour;
Or green,
Like clear deeps of air,
Light massed upon itself,
Like the green pinions,
Cleaving the trouble of approaching night,
Shining in their own lucency,
Of the great angels that guarded the Mountain;
Or amber so clear
It might have oozed from the crystal trunk
Of the tree Paradisal,
Symbol of life,
That grows in the presence of God eternally.
And these pure waters
Leap from the adamantine rocks,
The granites and shists
Of my dark and stubborn country.
From gaunt heights they tumble,
Harsh and desolate lands,
the plateau of Braeriach
Where even in July 
The cataracts of wind
Crash in the corries with the boom of seas in anger,
And Corrie Etchachan
Down whose precipitous
Narrow defile
Thunder the fragments of rock
Broken by winter storms
From their aboriginal place;
And Muich Dhui's summit,
Rock defiant against frost and the old grinding of ice,
Wet with the cold fury of blinding cloud,
Through which the snow-fields loom up, like ghosts from a world of eternal annihilation,
And far below, where the dark waters of Etchachan are wont to glint,
And unfathomable void.
Out of these mountains,
Out of the defiant torment of Plutonic rock,
Out of fire, terror, blackness and upheaval,
Leap the clear burns,
Living water,
Like some pure essence of being,
Seen only by its movement.

The poem is so vivid and visceral, it makes me miss the country even more. Sorry, to hit you hard with names and links this week, amazing what you can remember and manage when you've had some actual time and distance to focus on yourself.

Back to the grind tomorrow, but it's a four day week this and next week due to the Easter holiday, so that will help a bit. 

I hope you're all holding up and finding bright spots to help you get through. 

Wandering the Words

It's been a strange week. I still can't get on my course that started last week due to technical issues. My whole application has been wiped from the system. I have no clue what's going on. I haven't had any teaching work this week, so I feel like I'm on hold. I had hoped to do some writing, but I only managed to work on finishing poems, nothing new.

I did get to visit a lot of people I haven't seen in months because of work which was lovely, but I just felt restless. I'm hoping this week will be better. I need to move with some purpose.

There's an American poet in my writing group, the first poet we've had besides myself in a while. Last week she read a poem and it was so American. I can't explain why, the strong rhythm, the long line breaks, the subject, I don't know.  I clumsily tried to explain to her after her reading that it was like being back in my creative writing classes in Idaho or out in nature there with my fellow Forestry students.

It's odd, I liked the reading style, but again I didn't. Like most of America, it doesn't fit me anymore, but it's familiar and slightly comforting. Maybe too much so, I knew that poem, that voice as soon as she started, it took me somewhere I'd been. It made me understand why I struggle to get accepted by American magazines, my poems don't sound like that, don't have that feeling anymore. I want to explore more, I don't want to go back on that mountain path I'd walked before.

I also listened to some poems by Angela Carr on her website. She has a little Sound Cloud box at the bottom on the right hand side. Her style of reading also felt familiar, but more what I heard in university in Scotland where I really got into writing. Treading familiar boards of long halls rather than walking in the woods. 

It was lovely to experience both again, I don't listen to enough poetry. I've visited the Poetry Foundation website several times and they often have audio of their poems, many times read by the poet. You can hear their way they read it, where they place the emphasis, hear their way of walking through their words. I need to wander back. 

Writing Stats for 2019

I'm always amazed how busy poetry editors are in the break between Christmas and going back to work in the new year. I've had yet another rejction from Granta which came as no surprise, but I've had three acceptances and two publications in the first four days of 2020.

My poem 'Saltshine' has been published in Barren Magazine's Issue 12 and my poem about early photographer Sarah Anne Bright 'The Quillan Leaf' in Lucy Writers' Funky Women Issue. Can't wait to have a bit of time to browse through both issues.

I've finally sorted through all my own submission records for 2019.

2019

155 new poems

221 submissions to magazines, 7 to book publishers

170 magazine rejections, 6 book rejections

27 acceptances, 1 win pamphlet competition

41 poems were published in 25 magazines or other venues, 21 online

45 blog posts, 1 guest blog post

Compared to last year:

2018

73 new poems

94 submissions to magazines, 8 to book publishers

65 magazines rejections, 9 book rejections

10 acceptances

15 poems were published in 7 magazines or other venues, 5 online

48 blog posts

I've upped my acceptance rate from 10% to 12% and had a pamphlet accepted for publication. In order to do that I've had to more than double my submission rate which in truth was easy as I had so many more poems to work with. With going back to work I probably won't be able to keep up those numbers, but I know what's possible and I hope to be able to build on these contacts once my pamphlet comes out.

I have a lot of poems I need to finish for 2020 and Angela Carr has published her prompts for her newest course (without all the cool poems and more details she includes if you take her course) so I'm going to also try and write a few new ones as well. I've decided against taking a course this month because I want to focus on getting more work and catching up on things like the final edits of my pamphlet. I've been going over it this week, fine tooth comb kind of thing. I love it, but I need to draw a line in the next day or so and send it off. I could over-edit if I'm not careful. 

So January 2020 is off and running. We'll see what my momentum is like once the kids are back at school and I'm available for work. 

Holiday Break and Barnhill

I've just spent two weeks on holiday in Scotland, out of routine, barely writing. The first week I was away from my family, relaxing. I wrote in my journal about my trip and took notes of images and lines that popped into my head about what I was experiencing, but I didn't work on any poems. A lot of rejections came in, unsubmitted poems piled up. It felt weird and strangely liberating. I missed my daily routine, but enjoyed soaking up the new experiences which I will hopefully work into poems in the future.

While on the island of Jura, I took a long walk to Barnhill, George Orwell's house, where he wrote 1984. We got lucky to manage the 12 miles between the rain showers and had a beautiful view to eat our lunch just below Barnhill. Twelve miles was too much for me, I was pretty tired and sore by the end, but earned my shower and wine reward at the hotel. My friend walked all three Paps of Jura the next day, so I feel like a total weakling. 

I've ordered a copy of Barnhill by Norman Bissell to read when I get back home. It's about Orwell's time on Jura, writing the novel 1984. I had hoped it would arrive before I left for Jura, so I could read it while I was there, but it will be a nice chance to relive the place. I'm looking forward to it.

I also took a boat tour to the Corryvreckan where Orwell almost drowned saving his young son's life. One of my friend's son was planning on taking part of a yearly race across the Corryvreckan whirlpool gulf. Not for the faint of heart, but I'm told it's well-supervised. I learned it's not just one constant whirlpool but an area where the tides from the loch rush out over a sea bottom that goes from super deep to shallow in a short space, so the water becomes very rough and changes constantly, causing standing waves and whirlpools. Here's a small whirlpool on a calm day. 

One of my holiday's highlights was rescuing my childhood/ youth's diaries from the attic along with a pile of old writing journals and favourite books. The books and journals are being posted, but I carried the diaries in my carry-on back to Finland. I really feel like I've been missing a limb with them being gone. Hopefully I have all of them, but with 36 years worth it'll take a while to sort through them and check. Hopefully there will be lots of material there for me to reconsider.

Both Angela Carr and Wendy Pratt are running online courses in August. I can highly recommend both and have joined one to help me turn my experiences and old writing into new poems. 

I'm back to the grind this morning. Need to get into writing again as well as admin.

Finding Balance

One word that kept coming up in my recent mentoring discussion with Angela Carr was 'balance' and it's a word I use a lot in my creative writing teaching as well. We as writers struggle to achieve balance in so many different ways.

A poem or story hangs on many fine threads; imagery, background information, action, language, emotion, and the author attempts to keep them all balanced between what the reader needs to understand the piece and what the author themselves desires of their work. If the language is too difficult to follow or the emotion not well-presented or if the writers tells too much, breaking the threads, the connection to the reader can be lost. 

A balance between what is presented on the page and what the reader sculpts from the words in their own mind. A balance between what the author wants the reader to see and what they can lay out with words. All these things carry the weight of the writing and relying too heavily on one or not giving enough attention to another can throw off the poem or story. 

Once I get past the initial rush to lay out images or the plot, I love the fine tuning, the balancing of all the finer points of writing, playing with the language, weighting words by their placement, drawing out imagery. I try to keep the reader in my mind, what they need, how much I want to lead them and how much I want them to run off on their own with my words. But also giving precedence to what I want the poem to do and say. It's a delicate act of balance above the poem while stepping within it. 

Sometimes it works and sometimes I focus too much on what I want, the 'thing' I'm trying to make the poem do that I force it into shape and it shows in its reluctance. This is when I need mentors, writing group companions and other readers to step up and tell me something isn't working. I find it so helpful to have these dialogues because I am mired deeper within my own writing than another reader and often I cannot see where the problem is, even though I may have a sense of their being one.

So even though criticism can be hard to take, it ultimately can help you achieve that balance your writing needs. But it's never easy. 

In other news, three online magazines have featured my work recently The Stockholm Review of Literature which I just stumbled upon, ink, sweat and tears and The Honest Ulsterman. The latter two I've been trying to get into for a while, so was overjoyed when they found something they liked. I'm still wandering through the issues and there is a wide variety of authors and styles to choose from, so I hope you find something you enjoy. Thanks to the hard-working editors and their staff for offering such great opportunities to get writers' work out into the world and for accepting my poems. 

Just a reminder that GloPoWriMo - Global (or National if you're in the US) Poetry Writing Month starts April First and runs the entire month. One of the challenges is to write a poem a day which until this autumn I never thought I could (see links for my thoughts on this two years ago) so I'm going to step up to the challenge, but because I'm an idiot I've signed up for two online writing courses in April - one with Angela Carr and one with Wendy Pratt, both of whom I've mentioned here before as I've done several courses with them. 

Both courses have limited places and are filling up. There is no pressure with either tutor to write a poem a day or to share them on their private Facebook pages (visible only to the writers on the course and the tutor) but they are guaranteed to have a good positive atmosphere and the daily writing prompts are a good way of getting your writing brain working. They both have a small fee, check out the links. 

I have no preconceptions that I'll be writing two poems a day, but I figured between the two daily prompts I should come up with at least one good first draft daily. And anything I don't manage during the month, I can use to keep myself writing afterwards. I hope you think about joining one of the courses or get involved with other GloPoWriMo events, check out the website listed above for activities, prompts and local events. 

Grounding

I've just had a discussion with Angela Carr in a mentoring session about grounding the reader in poems. She suggested and has anecdotal evidence of other poems/editors saying the same that the first stanza should ground the reader in the poem. By grounding I mean a good understanding of the who, what, where, when sort of details that the poem is hung on.

This idea caught my attention as one repeated comment I've had from other poets reading my work, until recently, was that I shouldn't introduce my poems so much in the first lines or stanza. That I should go for impact to grab the reader's attention and then ground them once they have an interest in the poem. They always seem to want to move the information further down or remove it totally because it was too 'telling'.

The same is said about novel openings, that the first lines and sections should grab your attention and then you can build up information from there. But with fiction you have much more space to develop these things.

I'm torn on this subject and don't have a clear answer for what is best to do. I did agree with my previous critics that many of my earlier poems did start off with a stanza that set up the location and feel of them poem and it left them feeling a bit staid and I have liked the pieces I've written recently that have more of a hook to pull the reader in. 

I'm worried a little that each of my Finnish poems would have to have the word Finland shoe-horned into the first stanza in order to ground the reader. I do rely sometimes on the idea that my Finnish collection is mostly set in Finland with me and my family as the 'protagonists' and similarly for my Scottish collection and that will be obvious when they are actually published collections, but in the individual poems this will not always be clear at the beginning if published in a magazine without background detail.

So I can see what she means. You don't want the reader to walk away with too many questions after your first stanza but I also don't want to have everything explained, sometimes it's nice for the reader to take the words and fit themselves into them, using their own experiences.

How much background info does the reader need? If I reference a myth connected to a creature, do I need to explain it to them or can I just use the imagery from it and hope if they're interested they'll look it up themselves, as long as my connections to the images and the myth work within the poem on their own. 

Yeats never mentioned Zeus in 'Leda and the Swan' and I remember a teacher having to explain the myth to the class, though I knew it. Does the power of the poem still hold if you don't know the story? I don't want to spoon-feed my reader info, but in some poems there are certain bits of info that would help the reader to understand better, so I do have to includ that. Do I have to explain every Finnish word or cultural reference, include a glossery in my book or can I leave some to context?

I need to go back and look at poets and poems I like to see how much info do they actually give when opening the poem and whether the details I want the reader to know to understand the poem come through clearly. 

It was a thought-provoking conversation and it once again highlights the benefits of having other readers critque your work, especially those with experience in the genre. 

Ticking Boxes

I thought I posted this week, but I guess I didn't. Time getting away with me and I can't remember if I had an interesting subject to look at. 

My online course with Wendy Pratt finished and I've gone back to my list of verbs from Angela Carr's suggestions. I'm still writing a poem draft daily, I've written over 40 poems so far this year. 

I'm getting my second unpublished collection ready to send out. I've edited it once and need to look at layout again. That means spreading it out on the floor and moving things about, but I just can't summon up the enthusiasm just now. Struggling with things just now. I should be sending my first collection out to other publishers, getting this one ready to go out.

I've been researching poetry publishers and it's depressing. The smaller publishers want or are only able to support their local talent which I respect, so often aren't interested in international writers. The ones who are big enough are in such high demand they shut their intake of unsolicited  submissions. I can't publish locally as I can't find a Finnish poetry publisher that publishes English collections, again fair enough, but it leaves me in an unhappy position of once again not fitting the right boxes though I try and do what publishers require.

I can see why so many writers are turning to self-publishing, though I don't think I'm there yet. There's a plethora of writers who want to be published, but with e-books, Amazon and people preferring social media and television to reading there's not many publishers looking for authors and poetry is always a struggle to sell on both sides.

For now I'll keep plugging along and hope that some good news will be forth-coming.  

Winter Warmer

I've been busy on Wendy Pratt's new course, but am also dipping in and out of Angela Carr's challenge to continue writing for 100 days. She's given us a list of 100 verbs and we can try and use them to write a poem. So some days I'm sketching out two poems in the morning. 

I'm still finding the Poems to Save the World course difficult. I'm not good on writing a social commentary or on current events, but I've managed a few that I will continue to work on. But I have a pile that I've set aside as dross. Maybe I'll have another look at them once these courses stop. I really haven't had much time for editing. Wendy's suggested finding a strong metaphor to hang our discouse on, but I'm struggling with that and having it feel so unpoetic, but hopefully I'm hitting a few marks with my writing. 

But I have had another two magazines accept my work, one online and one in print. Unbelievable really to have so many this early in the year. I'm getting used to online magazines, but I still prefer print. The rejections are still coming in and I need to catch up with my new submissions. I've had one publisher reject my collection as well, but these smaller acceptances are keeping me going through this long winter. 

Slow January

It's cold. Bitter blue skies, Finnish cold. I hate it, but it's a good excuse to sit under blankets with tea and write poetry. About hating the cold.

Not much else going on this week beyond the usual attempt at a poem a day and submissions. I've written around 12 poems out of the 21 prompts for Angela Carr's course so far. I've missed a few days due to lack of inspiration or lack of time, but I'm happy with my efforts. I've also signed up for Wendy Pratt's next online course which is called Poems to Save the World. It will have a more social-minded theme than I'm used to, but it could be a good challenge for me as I don't usually write that kind of poetry. 

I made it to my writing group on Friday after a few weeks away, it was full up with some new faces as well which is nice to see. Probably full of new year's resolutions to get back into writing. I hope they stick around. I got some good feedback on my poems. 

I've also sent some poems to Helena Nelson of HappenStance  Press as part of her reading window for subscribers where she will give feed back on 6 poems (3 if you're abroad). Her comments are always very helpful and insightful. The window is open twice a year and it's worth the small subscriber fee. Subscribers also get a discount on purchases from the press. 

I took advantage of my subscriber discount to buy Gerry Cambridge's The Dark Horse - The Making of a Little Magazine, about his work editing the Scottish/American literary magazine which has been around for almost 30 years. 

I worked briefly with Gerry when I was in Scottish publishing and it was lovely to read his memories of some of the writers I also had contact with during my time, Philip Hobsbaum, Edwin Morgan, Angus Calder. It was like being back. He also has great insight on the processes of running a magazine, right down to his thoughts behind his type-setting choices. It kind of made me miss the work, but I think it's probably rose-tinted on my part. Publishing not an easy job in any sense.

Hope you're warmer than I am.

An Impossible Task

The middle of January and it's been all go, submitting, writing, being accepted, being rejected, being published. I hope this continues to bode well for the rest of the year. Angela Carr's online course has pushed me on to eight new poems. I haven't been able to commit as much time to the Facebook posts as I'd like, but there's a good buzz there among the participants and I'm enjoying the prompts. 

I've had two poems from my previous online writing courses published in The Selkie's anthology. Based in Edinburgh, The Selkie is an online magazine mostly run by women which is refreshing. They also have a mentoring project New Voices which is worth looking into if you're a beginning writer. I've found working with a mentor very helpful and encouraging. 

I've submitted to 5 magazines and a have a list building up for more to go out, partially from Angela Carr's list of places to submit. I've already had one quick acceptance which helps with the new year, new start feeling. 

I haven't really come up with any resolutions, but to keep the momentum I've got going with writing and submitting. I'd like to get back to my fiction as well, but right now it doesn't feel like a good fit for my focus. Writing a poem a day makes it difficult to switch between fiction and poetry. 

Maybe that's a good focus for my theme for my writing prompt today 'an impossible task'. Can I be all things as a writer, a poet, a novelist, submitting tons of work and writing a poem a day, rewriting two novels? And lets not forget a mother, a partner, a social secretary and a chauffeur. There's also the thought that I should go back to work. I've been taking care of the kids for a long time now, but to be honest I like my life as it is right now and I'm scared to try and venture out into the working world again. 

On the writing side, it feels important to focus on the poetry, getting my collections finished and published, keep up my magazines submissions. On the personal side, I don't know what I'm doing with my life. Hopefully that will become clear later this year.

Not in the Mood for Resolutions

I believe my in-laws have thrown out almost all the copies of my poetry book, link on the side. We had taken them down from our loft in Scotland and packed them up in boxes, but there was a delay in getting someone to bring them to Finland, so my other half's siblings helped seal up the boxes properly for collection. I guess the boxes were too heavy as when they arrived here, the books had been taken out. I assumed they would be stashed for us to sort later. 

My other half just returned from a trip to Scotland where he could find less than ten copies of my collection and none of another book that had some of my work that I had produced myself through my old publishing company. My sister-in-law said they had cleared out a lot at my father-in-law's house where the boxes had been stored, so I guess they decided to recycle them.

I'm gutted. Why would you do that? Throw out copies of someone's work. I understand the boxes were heavy and they wanted to clear my father-in-law's house out while he was in hospital. I had suggested they might want to take a few extra boxes to spread things out as we had packed them, but hadn't tried to move them afterwards. But just to decide that my books weren't worth saving is offensive. I don't even know how to bring it up with them. The distance makes it difficult but also the fact that they don't appreciate books of any sort really and don't understand the work, time and money that went into those books. 

So I have less than a dozen copies of my book. I had hoped to have a cheap sale of the books once they arrived, so spread them around before the hopeful publication of my next book. But they're pulp.

I was going to think about resolutions for the new year in this post, but I have lost any impetus for that now.

I'm still moving along with Angela Carr's January Write Off. You can still join in, but clicking on the link where she has posted her list of prompts and I think she's still accepting people on the Facebook page, you just jump in on whatever day it is. 

I've sent out my first submission and also received my first rejection from another magazine. 2019 is rolling apace, I guess.