Scottish Book Tour 2025

Every summer when I go to Scotland to work, I order an obscene amount of books from a small independent bookseller in the Scottish Borders. I try to catch up on recent Scottish book publications, but also pick a few that I've heard about over the winter. I try to focus on Scottish authors and publishes, but this year I branched out a little. Thanks you Mainstreet Books for feeding my addiction. 

I usually try to review some of the books I've bought and read, though this year I seem to be reading quite slowly so it's already 2026 and I'm just touching the bottom of the pile. So yes, this is another 2025 book round up.

Kirsten MacQuarrie's book Remember the Rowan published by Red Squirrel Press was unexpected. I'd heard of the book Ring of Bright Water, but knew nothing about its author Gavin Maxwell and I knew of the poet Kathleen Raine and had read a few poems, but her life was not something I had heard about. The book charts their volatile relationship. Raine was in love with Maxwell who was a homosexual. He became her muse for much of her poetry and she was involved with the Maxwell's first otter which was the focus of his most famous book. Remember the Rowan is a big read, well-researched and covering decades of their inspiration and arguments. I enjoyed it, it's very well written. 

The book is a real insight into the life of a woman who plays a midwife to an artist, not a muse, similar to Sylvia Beach and James Joyce, a woman who makes it possible for a man to succeed, even to the detriment of her own work and well-being. For that reason, I couldn't feel good about the story. I felt caught up in Raine's life and turmoil, so much so I wanted to take her for a drink to tell her to get out of the toxic relationship. It shows how intimate and believable a writer MacQuarrie is. 

James by Percival Everett was a book I wanted to enjoy, but I just didn't and I can't put my finger on why. It follows the character of Jim from Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. We follow Jim as his escapes from slavery and goes on the run, meeting Huck. The two books overlap and Everett manages it well, creating a strong character and backstory for him, but I just didn't gel with James or his story. The story sometimes pushes at the reader to shout its message and the ending felt rushed, so I walked away feeling unsatisfied.

On the Calculation of Volume by Solvej Balle, on the other hand, blew my socks off. If I was one of those readers who underlines my favourite lines or sections, the book would be covered with ink. Though not an original idea, a character that is stuck in a loop to repeat one day over and over, it handles it in a totally unexpected way. It is a quiet study, a character who unravels herself over and over within this day and within her relationship with her husband. The language is poetic and soft, a slow dive into the character's mind, and I was hooked from the very beginning. There are currently six books in the series, four of which have been translated into English, the first shortlisted for the Booker last year. Our next trip to Scotland will include a visit to pick up the available volumes. Absolutely breathtaking. 

The Details by Ia Genberg was another Booker Prize shortlisted books by a Scandinavian female author I read last year. A stream of consciousness, a fevered telling, it unravels the character's relationships with various friends and loves over the decades. While the book is well-crafted, I just couldn't find a way into the character. We follow her through her life in intimate detail, yet I felt distanced from her. Sometimes knowing a character's every thought is too much.

Muckle Flugga by Michael Pedersen was a book I considered buying in the summer, but decided to postpone as it was too big and I already had too many. I was given it later unexpectedly and dived in. Set on an isolated lighthouse far north of mainland Scotland, it tells the story of an artist who comes to stay and gets caught up in the life of the lighthouse keeper and his son. The book rollicks and rambles over the sea and island, delighting in its nature and unpredictability. The characters deal with their own storms, young Ouse on the brink of adulthood and all the choices it offers and The Father, the lighthouse keeper, who watches all he has built start to be pulled away by the outsider Firth, an Edinburgh artist who arrives with plenty of baggage. The language is unpredictable and delightful, full of humour and bright poetry and the characters are well-crafted and engaging. The use of Scots is unobtrusive but essential to the atmosphere, bringing all the details together. A fun and engaging read.

Poyums Annaw by Len Pennie is the second poetry collection by the Scots Word of the Day internet sensation. I first stumbled upon her during our Covid lockdown where she shared a new Scots word with a hint of humour and honesty. I love her poem 'I'm not having children' and her poem about the Daft Days, but I hadn't read her first collection or her other works. Len Pennie is now an Scots language advocate, but she also has become a voice for survivors of gender-based violence after facing a lengthy court case of her own and constantly facing internet trolls on her various social media platforms. Her poems cover her own situation and fighting the patriarchy in general, mostly in Scots.  They are honest and acerbic, sometimes tinged with humour. They do not bury the punchline in metaphor, instead they often pack a mean punch. While the rhyming sometimes gets to me, I'm a free verse kind-of-gal, the poems carry the reader along without feeling they are reading literature with a capital L. They are the kind of thing you'd share with your non-poetry pals and the two poems above have been passed on to me from unexpected places. Len often shares recordings of her poetry on social media and her genuine joy of Scots and poetry are infectious. Her poems are really meant to be heard, so if you can get the audio book read by Len herself, I'm sure it's worth hearing them in the author's own voice. 

The Ghost Lake by Wendy Pratt is another memoir-type book written by someone I vaguely know. Wendy Pratt is a poet who runs workshops, offers mentoring and ran the magazine Spelt. I won a mentoring session with her a decade ago and she was a great second set of eyes on my writing. Since then she's had several collections published and now has written a memoir about her journey through grief based around a paleo-lake where she has lived her whole life, a lake that has long disappeared, but left it's mark on the landscape and her life. The history and archaeology within the book are really captivating and are used to peel back the layers of stories. Her journey to find her way in her writing career, through the grief of infertility and the loss of her daughter during her birth and her father's recent death is interwoven with the landscape and the people who have lived there. 

It's not the kind of book I would normally read as it feels a bit like voyeurism, but here the reader is being invited closer to actually walk amongst the story, picking up a shell or stone with the author to connect. Wendy has always been very open about her struggles, on her blog and in her writing. The book touches on a lot of topics close to her heart: rural life, working class struggles, neurodiversity and grief. It shares the overwhelming weight she carries and the chinks of light she has followed to stand above it all, if only for moments. It's a touching tribute to the area and the people who have helped her on her way. 

Fower Pessoas by Colin Bramwell is a book I've just started but already I want to scribble down so many lines. It is a Scots 'translation' of Fernando Pessoa, the Portuguese poet known for his heteronyms, alternative personalities that he took on to write his poems. There are so many layers upon layers within this book, Bramwell to Pessoa to his heteronyms, Scots to English to Portuguese, that I imagined it would be a difficult read. However, the poems have a friendly feel like sitting with a slightly drunk Glaswegian poet hearing their thoughts about the world. There's philosophy swirled with humour and sarcasm, insight below the mocking. I'm really enjoying it, so far. 

Though he doesn't say it in his acknowledgments, I think this is a version of subversive translations as in the poetry collection I reviewed by Taylor Strickland. Bramwell admits he doesn't speak Portuguese well and these poems are moved in time and place to modern Glasgow, the heteronyms taking on a Scots personality and language. They are responses to Pessoa and our own restless times and to Scotland's own identity, all wrapped up in its own antisyzygy. I read some Pessoa after I came back from Lisbon a few years ago, I'll have to dig them out again and remind myself of their own voices, but I'm already enjoying the use of Scots, the sense of movement and freedom of the poems. There a sense that there's no pinning them down. 

Finally a publication note for myself, first of 2026, my poetry has been included in Helsinki Writers Group's 2025 anthology. Go here to check it out. 

So goodbye 2025 and welcome 2026. I have no plans or resolutions, just keeping my eyes open to see what the year holds for me. Best of luck to us all. 

Poetry Snippets for GloPoWriMo

It's April (woohoo) and I'm bunged up with a head cold and my birch allergy, so I'm hiding indoors though the weather isn't too cold. Spring always gets started without me when it finally comes along as there is just so many birch trees here. Time for writing, watching rugby and indoor chores. Not too bad a way to spend the weekend. 

April is also time for the write-a-poem-a-day challenge from NaPoWriMo/GloPoWriMo. I've been posting my attempts on my various social media channels and have managed to keep up the first six days. I don't always manage a full poem, but usually have a start I can play with over the next month or so. I use various sites for inspiration, including the official site listed above, Wendy Pratt's Substack prompts, Todd Dillard's thought-provoking prompts (he has the last few years' threads on Twitter, I think, but I won't link to there) and my Substack feed in general. I'm enjoying the break in my day to come up with some lines or just play with words. 

Here are my first six days. I only post snippets as I may want to publish the finished poems.

Day 6 

my children think I’m mocking them

when I play his song

think I don’t get it

overplayed, it’s become cliched

and I don’t

not how they see it

but I remember watermelon

the sizzle, the splash

too eager

when it’s fresh

Day 5

I present as gifts

my scratches of language

the bookshop receipts 

in suitcase pockets

the curled milkweed pods

nettle stings

on my wrist and ankle to kiss

I never forget the orange glow of the city 

and of the crackling aurora

my compass is the cold sea

and humbling rain

Day 4

beneath the barbed-wire taste 

of a rust sunset

I drag my heels to say goodbye

Day 3

let myself drown 

in the salt and cold timing

between us

waves of decades 

and distance that gnaws

and gnaws at me

I am mortal and I love

Day 2

the braiding of long memory

did not foreshadow this rebirth

I cannot utter regrets

to be so carried away

all sense is burned to fragments

time drones on untuned

as I give in

Day 1

I walk my routine

repetition and longing

to the school door

a portrait of my daily self 

worn down

first bell to last

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.

Short, but Sweet Steps into Winter

With a snap of an icy finger, we have a sprinkling of snow which is enough to lift the mood by brightening the scene. The dark, rainy days of winter are always tough as we come to this end of the year. The sun has set in Northern Finland for the next five weeks or so and even down south we feel the oppressive weight of the days getting shorter and shorter. So as much as I hate snow and, yes, I realise I'm living in the wrong place for that attitude, it does help allieviate the darkness. So far we have enough for the kids to go sledging and it's melted off the paths and drive, so I don't have to shovel, so that's enough for me. 

What's that to do with poetry? It puts me in a more wintery mood, than the damp leafless scenes we've had the past few weeks. Wendy Pratt is running a one-week winter poetry course, if anyone is looking for a short, but sweet exploration of winter. And it costs only a tenner. I'd do it, but I'm behind with the previous course, so want to focus on that. Her daily prompts whether visual, other poet's work or just short suggestions and ideas are great jump starts for the poetic brain. 

And if you're looking for a wee Christmas gift, grab a copy of the Hedgehog Press' poetry calendar, including my poem 'The Last Drops of September'. Pre-orders being taken here and you can also take advantage of poetry bundles, the calendar with a selection of new pamphlets or collections from the press. The calendar is really lovely, a great mix of images and poetry, and I can't wait to see it for real. 

I doubt I'll get much poetry done today though. There's a wee hangover hanging over me from last night's St Andrew's Day Ceilidh. I'm happy just to chill and enjoy the sunshine with the cat, so this will also be short, but sweet. Enjoy. 

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.

Writing with Monkeys

It's the summer holidays here, kids everywhere and I don't know if I'm coming or going with my writing. We've all been sick with various bugs so I've been too tired or ill to focus much on the Wendy Pratt course I've joined though I'm enjoying the different focus of the prompts. I'm not able to write every day, but I'm trying to grab time here and there. I hate not being able to join in on the Facebook page as much as I would like, though we had a good online group chat last week. Wendy's releasing a new course soon, so keep an eye on her site for details. 

The current course is focussing on 'Writing with a Beginner's Mind,' offering techniques that help you lose that critical voice that often plagues writers, the worries that the work isn't good enough, the guilt that we never will be able to balance our lives and writing. I do struggle with the later most, trying to be a single parent and a writer and find a real job to support my family has more than its share of guilt. I need to try Wendy's meditation and focus excercises more, my monkey brain has monkey brain and I can never turn all the noise off. Even more so with four monkeys climbing around the house. 

One of my favourite prompts so far has been to think about the idea of 'banned words' in poetry, words that are too dated, over-used, purple. I went and found a list of archaic words and wrote a poem playing with them. I love dictionaries and thesaurus and using them to find new words and meanings. It makes you see language in a new light. What do you think, should words like shard and gossamer be banned from contemporary poetry?

My poem 'Dripping Winter' has appeared in Crossways Literary Magazine. I hope you take a wander over and check out the issue and maybe purchase a hard copy.

And finally, Happenstance Press is having an interesting challenge to write a rhyming poem on a wrapper. I'm not very good with rhymes, but thought I could try something short, maybe with some Finnish words. What rhymes with suklaa?

Writing as a Woman of a Certain Age

I finally get a quiet day to sit down and work. I'm aching and tired and just want to go back to bed. But there's only one week left of school and no summer camps booked this year, so I need to make use of this me-time while I have it. I'll soon need to balance it with entertaining four kids, mostly on my own. 

I've broken the 400-poem mark this week. I've written over 400 poems in my writing life, that just blows me away. This is only counting the proper, grown-up poems that I think are worthy to share and try and get published. Over half of them are published in my books or in journals. Over 150 of them have been written in the last two years. Just imagine how much I could have written if I could have figured out the secret of writing a poem daily earlier. I used to write every day pre-kids and even a bit after they were born, but I was slower at sculpting my poems and have spent a lot of the last decades writing novels that went nowhere.

I feel like I've found my stride in what most people would consider middle age, though I don't feel middle-aged. Or at least what I thought middle-aged meant before I got here. I just feel like me, maybe more tired and achey though. 

But then I looked at a list of competition calls yesterday and realised once again that I don't fit into so many boxes in publishing. Most of the competitions I couldn't even consider because of my age, I'm over 30 or 37 or whatever random cut-off they choose. I get it, publishers and grant bodies want to support young, struggling, up-and-coming writers. I also read recently that more poetry is being read by under 35s these days than any other age group, so they want to appeal to that audience. But what about us older, struggling writers, there must be a group of us searching for support and an audience ready to read us. 

I'm also the wrong nationality or live in the wrong place or have the wrong career or write the wrong genre. Does anyone have a call for poems from a 48-year-old white cis-women US poet living in Finland?

I worked at Chapman Publishing in Edinburgh for many years and while there we published a book of poems by Magi Gibson called Wild Women of a Certain Age. It was a brilliant, fierce and powerful book and I loved being involved with it. I was in my late 20s while my editor and Magi and some of the other women we worked with were almost a couple of decades older and though I loved the fire of their writing and intensity of how they approached the issue, I couldn't understand why this idea of fighting against the constraints of this 'certain age' was so important to them. I get it now. I need to find my own tribe of wild women soon.

Joining Twitter has opened my eyes to the new network of writers out there, I've discovered Maggie Smith recently through her empowering tweets. Her book Good Bones is the next book I plan to buy, her poem of the same name is a heart-shattering force, especially if you have young children. She's definitely a Wild Woman I'd invite. 

Good news for my old bones, two of my poems have been included in this online anthology from the course I did with poet Wendy Pratt. I really enjoyed all of her courses and it was nice to have this as the cherry on the cake at the end of this one from April. 

https://wendysaprilwriteathon.home.blog/2019/05/22/gerry-stewart/

Another Wild Woman, Wendy is running another course in June. I'm still debating whether to do it due to time and money constraints. And Jen Hadfield, another amazing poet and friend, is running a free 5-day online course with Arvon which even though it falls while I'm on holiday I am definitely doing as I've never had the pleasure of working with Jen and am really looking forward to it. I'm not sure if the Arvon course will have the sharing element that Wendy's course does, but I'm sure her prompts and ideas will be worth trying. 

So I'll keep writing daily and churning out my work in the hope that I will soon find my niche, my tribe, my audience. 

Keep going. 

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. 

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.

Winding Up Autumn

I've managed to catch up a bit with my writing from a prompt a day, 17 out of 30, and I'm back to at least sketching out a poem every day if not writing a good first draft. So that's encouraging and many of us will continue to write once the group is finished, so the sharing of our efforts will continue for a bit on the Facebook page.

Many of the poems I've been writing have been working from the problems I had a few months ago that put me in such a dark place. It's cathartic to be able to work through some of those emotions and the fall out to what happened. There's still things I won't touch on, but the end of summer and autumn in full force seems to be a good metaphor for the time. I've been grouping these poems into a rough collection just now, though I'm not sure where they'll take me in the end. 

I'm struggling with the oncoming winter darkness. I work to my UV sunlamp most mornings, but I still want to curl up on the couch under a blanket and hibernate. I have no energy for fiction at all. I'm enjoying the burst I've been getting from these courses for my poetry, but untangling the mess my novels have become seems like too much work. The new novel has become too complicated, I can't figure out how to express all the character's motivation. It's never enough for my readers, they either want more dramatic complications or less. 

So I think I need a break from fiction. Wendy Pratt's next online course won't be until January and it's a more intense, limited numbers course. Then February will be back to the original set-up. I'm torn whether to do the January course. I like the daily prompts, but this will be two weekly assignments which will get some close reading from Wendy instead. I guess it won't hurt to try it and it will give me something to focus on until February. 

I've been working a bit on my Finnish poetry collection. I think I have all the poems, just trying to sort format and editing. I still haven't heard about my Scottish collection's fate at the publishers.

So I keep on moving on. 

Slow Week

I'm still here. 

I haven't written in days, things have been chaotic, my brain hasn't been able to stay focussed on anything. 

I've signed up for Wendy Pratt's new poetry course which should get me back on track in October. Autumn is my favourite season, so hopefully I will find some inspiration in her prompts again this time. 

In the meantime, I'm taking it slow. Working on my fiction for the writing group, submitting work to magazines.

Hopefully I can turn this down time around soon. 

In the meantime, here's a magazine that's included my work in their first issue, Nitrogen House.

Working Through It

Another tough week. I've tried to focus on the daily writing prompts as a way of getting through it. Some days it worked because the prompt clicked with me, other times I couldn't see past the fog to focus on the prompt or anything at all. But I'm trying to be present at my notebook and computer every day possible. Even if I scratch nothings before giving up. 

I haven't been able to write much about the things going on lately, even in my journal, but I see it sneaking into the poems I'm writing. I'll let it simmer, reach out tendrils when it needs to as I try to work my way through it, in my head and in my writing. 

I have written 20 new poems this year, 12 through this poetry course with another 7 still in progress. That's one more than last year already. So I'm considering the course a success. For a tenner, it's been totally worth it. I will probably take the next one in October which will possibly be about autumn and aging which feels appropriate for the turn in the weather and my emotional mood. I feel I've aged a lot this month. 

I need to get back into my fiction, however. All this focus on poetry has slowed down my work on my current novel. But my writing group is back to a quieter, more serious venue, so I hope to return to bringing my novel sections rather than poems which seemed more appropriate for a busy cafe. Unfortunately, most of us are working on novels or longer fiction, so getting through 4 or 5 longer pieces in a night is difficult. Poems are quicker to discuss and they're getting better at it as most of them are not comfortable with poetry. 

Prompted into Action

Just over a week until the kids go back to school and I have to say I'm looking forward to it. I've just started Wendy Pratt's The Wild Within course and that on top of the University of Iowa's is hard with the kids about. Neither are labour-intensive, but I need small pockets of time to focus on reading texts and to work on my own writing, but that's difficult with my 4 year old. 

We've taken today off after a hot day walking around an island yesterday, but I'm having to tell the little one, 'I just want to finish this reading' before I bake cupcakes or see whatever toy she has this morning. 

Wendy's course started today and it looks like it's going to be a good one for me. She's sending a weekly email, poems to read, ideas to think about and will also be sending out a daily writing prompt to get us started. There's no expectation to produce a poem every day, thank goodness, but just getting into the habit of doing a writing exercise daily will hopefully get me out of my poetry slump. 

I've scribbled four pages of notes on today's prompt, but I'm not focussed enough for a poem, I don't think, but it's nice to start the process again. I like the directions it is taking me, but I'm struggling because part of what I want to write about it in the past and my memory is so bad that I can't sort out details without my old journals, half of which are in a loft in Scotland. So I need to focus on the more recent details. 

I'm getting some work on my most recent novel done as well, connected with the Moving Margins course. I've been working on a section that's been eluding me for a while - the funeral scene of one of my favourite characters. It's been difficult to find a balance of how to describe it, but to also put some weight in it beyond just telling what's happened. I think I know which way to take it now.

To be honest, this week's course selection seems thrown together. The texts and questions and are about setting, but the video lectures are about character. The discussion questions are badly copied and pasted as two are the same and another a section repeated. Disappointing, but if I get this chapter written, I'll forgive them. 

It may seem a strange way to work I'm sure, two screens open - poetry and fiction - and my notebook. Reading stories and emails, watching video lectures while cupcakes go in the oven and Bolognese bubbles on the stove. Things get done, in drips and drabs. My technique won't change once the kids go to school, but there will be more time to focus rather than fitting around their needs. 

And tomorrow they'll need to get out of the house, so I'm trying to get as much done here as possible today. Of course as soon as I basically finished up for the day, my littlest was happy to play in the bath for an hour and then colour for an hour with little demands for me (except to see and comment on every picture she drew). That's the way things go some days.