The Light is Starting to Return

I seem to only be able to find the energy and focus to write my blog when I'm on holiday. Day to day life with the kids and a full-time job is exhausting. I've also taken on a small editing job which requires focus when I just want to relax, but we're getting there. I'm waiting on my final grades for my course and considering starting a new one in the autumn, but at the moment that feels like a big ask. But my job is only until the end of this school year, so I might have more time on my hands next year. Or maybe not. 

I'm writing, here and there, editing pieces that have been hanging around 'in progress' for the last year or longer. My Scottish collection is up in the air. The publisher is struggling with the changes Brexit has brought to the publishing industry as well as personal issues and everything has been delayed and delayed again. I'm just trying not to think about it because I'm sure my living in the EU is going to throw up new problems when my book is considered. 

My writing group went through a rough patch and has re-emerged a bit bruised, but hopefully stronger. I am grateful that we're managing to reshape the group into something of which we can be proud. They have been a lifeline over the past year, even if only virtual and I would have hated if it broke apart.

Spring is coming, I'm sure. I can see it, patches of dead grass reappearing in the garden, but find it hard to put much faith in it's promise. Covid is getting a stronger foothold here in Finland and while we're trying to get the vaccine out, it's a slow, painful wait. There is that chink of light slowing expanding.

I've had a few poems published while I've been dormant here. I'm very grateful to all the time and hard work all these editors and their staff have put in to produce these issues. I know it's not easy. I've been wallowing in memories of my experiences in publishing in Edinburgh and though it's very rose-coloured at the moment, I do remember it being very difficult and rarely rewarding from the day-to-day perspective.

Severine has published my poem 'Fever'. 

Poetry and Covid have published three of my poems that resonate my feelings about, you guessed it, Covid. 

Literati Magazine has published three of my American poems. 

I appeared in the inaugural issue of Tír na nÓg and joined in with an online launch which was a lot of fun. 

Sideways Magazine has also shared one of my poems. 

Writer's Block Magazine published two of my poems and were a great help in bringing one to fruition. 

Mooky Chick published my piece 'The Cailleach Wakes in Finland' and it has found the perfect home. 

And Porridge has published one of the poems closest to my heart 'To Be Six in Your First Italian Gelateria'.

I've dipped in and out of most of these issues and am amazed to see so many people still writing, still working away amidst all this uncertainty, myself included. It reminds me that though the present is exhausting and time-consuming it will bring fruit, maybe not not, but soon. 

I'm Still Here - 2020 Review

I'm still here, winter is here. It's been nice to have some breathing room after such a busy and in some ways difficult year. The snow arrived and then melted. We usually get a good amount after the holidays, but last year we had no snow that stuck at all, so we're all waiting to see what this year brings. On so many levels.

Things have changed again and I'm still trying to figure it all out because it will probably change all over again soon enough. I was working full-time at a school until the Christmas break, so between that, my course and regular life, I was busy. I really enjoyed the role, half-teaching assistant, half- one-to-one assistant, so I'm starting to lean more that direction work-wise. I am actually beginning to enjoy my studies a bit, now that I kind of understand how to find the research material I need without access to real books and articles. I'll get through this course, but it is an absolute haul with everything else. 

I'm not going to try and rehash 2020. It's over, it wasn't good, it wasn't too bad for me, but I'm tired. I'm struggling to keep an even keel emotionally with all the stress the holidays usually bring, my Gran's recent death of Covid and just being so isolated here. The thought of starting anything new seems overwhelming.

I'm trying to not put too much pressure or expectation onto 2021. Crossing over its threshold doesn't make everything new, bright or easier. I have small goals I'm aiming for, but I just want to keep moving forward and see what happens. 

I don't know what work holds for me in the New Year. I'm hoping to be invited back to the same role as I've been in, but it's not permanent and it very much depends on the school's needs and finances. I've accepted an editing job for the new year for when my current course finishes and can pick up some substitute work if the other job falls through, so I'll still be busy. More on the editing job later. I'm looking at another course, but maybe later in the year.

I haven't been able to spend much time on my writing in 2020. A bit of writing in at the weekend, trying to finish a poem or two and submitting to various mags. 

Over the holiday, I hoped to read a bit and maybe do some reviews of recent books, but the days slide away so quickly. I'm trying to write, of course. I'm in the process of pulling down my other blog. I just don't have the time to keep it up. I'm copying it all onto my computer. It's like having a yearbook for our early years. There's too much to print, but I love to go back over them.

I've been gathering up the details for my end of year review of publications, submissions, rejections and so on. 

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 28 magazines or other venues, 33 online

33 blog posts

It's not a lot when compared to my best year, last year:

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 

The only thing that's improved is the number of acceptances and number of poems published, but that's important. I have more work accepted with fewer submissions. If I've done the math right, it's a 22% acceptance rate compared to a 13% for 2019. That feels huge.

I would have liked to see my Scottish collection published, but that's been pushed to later in 2021. It's still happening and hopefully I'll be able to get out there and promote it, rather than do it all online. So silver linings.

Overall, I'm happy with what I've accomplished in 2020, in my writing, in my jumbled life and I'm looking forward to 2021. I'm moving forward. I'm still here. 

Samhain - Happy New Year

Halloween, part of my favourite time of the year. Finland doesn't really celebrate it, but a few places put up decorations, a few houses have pumpkins out and offer treats. My children, of course, didn't understand that it wasn't a big deal here and were still over-excited. So I invited some extra kids over (we don't have any restrictions here) for a Halloween playdate and then took one along with us on a quick trick-or-treating to a couple of friends' house. They still managed a decent haul. 

Samhain, the Celtic holiday which Halloween is based on, is celebration of the year's end. The moment between the old and the new year where the veil between life and death thins. I've long considered Oct 31 my New Year's Eve, a point where my life has often changed. I celebrate the end of old and the potential of the beginning. I turned 50 this week as well, a good time for a change. 

A few opportunities have popped up this week and while they're not perfect or long-lasting, I've decided to go with them. One is teaching creative writing at after-school clubs. It's only for one term and will possibly mess up other potential work as it's a set time. As it's later than regular school hours, it will also make dinner-time a bit stressful. I really miss this sort of work and it will be fun as it's mainly keeping the kids engaged for an hour, no stress to really produce anything, so we can just play about with word games and writing silly poems. We'll see how it goes, if it's too much trouble I won't offer to do it again. Or it might lead to something else.

Is it best to stumble into something and continue to follow that momentum or to strive to find a strict path? I'm torn, I've bumbled the past year or so and occasionally good things happen, but it's not enough to support a family, to feel secure. 

But I'm feeling positive, a new start, hopefully something good will develop. 

Scrambling

I poured myself a glass of pear juice from the box in the fridge, took a big drink and thought it must have fermented as it tasted odd. It was wine from a similar looking carton. So I'm enjoying the relaxing buzz of that first drink of wine at lunch time, a strange, but welcome feeling. It won't last. 

I've been wanting to curl up for a nap all morning and this isn't helping. The dark mornings aren't helping. I've switched on the SAD lamp, it's not helping. The recent cold snap that reminds me that winter is too close also isn't helping. 

I'm trying to help myself. Booked an evening off to go to a friend's open mic event, met a fellow editor for a coffee to chat about advice to get my business going, I'm sending my CV off everywhere. I've had some days teaching which have broken my dry spell with subbing. I've raked 8 bags of leaves. I spent hours yesterday trying to sort out my poems that are scattered over several files, so they're all together and all the latest version. Life ticks on. 

I've worked on a single poem for ages over the past week. This morning I put it in a word mixer and totally dismantled it to start again. I've never thought to do that before, but I might go back to some other half-written pieces and try it. There was something freeing with removing myself from the previous idea and just focusing on what the words say when they were scrambled together. Wish I could do that with other half-sorted problems littering my life. 

Another poem that I've started anew is 'Duolingo' which has recently appeared in the first issue of Drawn to the Light. I started writing the poem for a Scottish Gaelic writing competition. I badly translated it. When it was declined, with lovely comments from the judges about my attempt, I removed most of the Scottish Gaelic and expanded the poem. Writing it was a sentimental journey, so it was lovely it could find a home. 

I hope you find a bit of light in these dark days. 

Little Steps Through the Mire

It's been raining on and off for weeks. My back garden is a bog, studded with windfall apples that I need to pick up before the birds, hares and insects hollow them out. I bought a fruit dryer to keep up with them. The kids eat each batch immediately, so there's no keeping up. With anything, the unmown grass, the fallen leaves, the red pile of apples beneath the tree, the kids and their hunger. 

Last week the scary, big question was 'what do I want to be when I grow up?'. Again. I feel like I did 23 years ago when I finished my last degree. It doesn't help that my course has set an assignment of basically 'what's next?' in terms of professional development and I don't have an answer. So I've had a fretful couple of weeks of worry and stress and questioning what my priorities are. 

I am unfortunately a Jill of all literary trades, but master of none. I've taught literature, creative writing, English as a second language, some media classes, but don't have a teaching certificate. I have worked as an editor with a small publishing company and for my own company for a variety of clients, but I have no specialty besides creative texts which is very niche in a country where I am not fluent in the native language. I am a writer and poet, but not top tier, so getting work, partially because of the language, is not easy. I have no confidence in anything I could offer just now.  

Most anything I am able to do, I don't have the right credentials or contacts or language skills. If I need to spend more time training, I want it to be in something I'll be happy to do for long term. I also need to take into account that I have a family to help support.

I've spoken to my course supervisor and to another teacher at my school for advice about staying in teaching. I'm hoping to meet up with another editor here in town this week for advice there. I've also had an off-the-wall idea I need to be brave enough to approach some people about for a future project. 

I have to not get bogged down in it all. I'm taking little steps forward and have to remind myself that for now that is good enough. It's not something I can decide or sort overnight. I've had a nice holiday week with my kids, trying not to fret too much. I'll get back to it Monday. 

This morning there was frost, a reminder I need to finish my winter digging, to pick the last apples, to rake more leaves. I need to take more long walks with the kids to enjoy the last of the decent weather and sunlight. We're heading into the dark season, there will be enough time for contemplation and planning then. 

And in writing news, my work has appeared in The Broken Spine Artist Collective anthology, 2nd Edition. They have a call out for submissions for their 3rd edition, so get your work in. 

I'm still writing, still working away at editing, submitting. Like the apples, some things don't wait. 

The Presence and Presents of Trees - The IRON Book of Tree Poetry

I'm sitting here watching my silver birch turn yellow and rain leaves onto my garden. My next month of weekends will be taken up by raking and raking some more. I can set my seasonal clock by those birch, when they wake from our long winter, the allergies they give me in May, the green coins shaking above our hammock and their bare trunks shining in the midwinter dark. They appear in my Finnish poems regularly, a totem of my time here.

Like many other poets, I've written countless poems about trees or including trees. Something about their shape, movement, permanence and long life attracts the writer. I've written one just on how the leaves fell from a small stand of trees, trying hard not to use words normally connected with leaves or trees, but to become caught up in their dance. I've written about old trees and fallen trees, trees as a metaphor for growing old or for loss. One of my tutors offered a course using trees as inspiration last year and I decided against it because I couldn't imagine I had more to say about trees. 

This autumn, I was asked to review The IRON Book of Tree Poetry, edited by Eileen Jones and Peter Mortimer. I can now see that no matter how many ways a poet can look at a tree, there's always more to say, more to see. The collection includes more than 40 poets, some I'm familiar with such as Ken Cockburn and Rebecca Gethin, others new names. All offer a vast feast of language and images related to the theme. It may feel like a familiar subject, but it is examined through so many different lenses: sometimes up close, looking at a group or individual specimen or from the vantage point of a physical or a cultural setting, that the poems still managed to surprise me. At times, they turn back on the reader or humanity in general and say things that were uncomfortable to hear. 

Poems that examine new vistas on the presence, usage and importance of trees in our world. Poets who imagine being trees, who consider our inter-connection with them, who plant trees not for themselves, but for future generations. The trees gathered have names, personalities, places in history, in the landscape and in their poets' lives. Some feel like friends, others silent teachers, leading us to understanding. These poems are a 'copse of everything' to do with tree poetry, as Gill McEvoy says in her offering 'A Small Wood by the Sea'.

Not all the poems praise trees out-right. They acknowledge the complicated relationship humans have with trees: we use them, destroy them, pass them by everyday without truly noticing their beauty. Alan Lunt shows a humorous lack of love for the unusual species in 'Monkey Puzzle', "They're more like armoured skeletons than ordinary trees" while I've always found them amusing, especially after I learned their names. We connect to some trees more than others.

With a darker, more introspective note in 'Rhododendrons at Stapleford Wood', Celia McCulloch examines the plant's place in the British landscape and our treatment of it. Her stark comparisons with the current political upheaval around immigration rings uncomfortably true: "We ethnic-cleanse the woods of these dark, flamboyant strangers". It makes me second guess my reasons for recently removing an awkward one from my garden and replacing it with a horse chestnut.

Other poems feel comforting and familiar, a walk through a grove we have long visited, while some bedazzle with their rich language and shifting focus like the two poems by Katrina Porteous:

                 Climbing out of a ruin, a tangle of spikes
                           Snagged by the wash-pool, 

                                                       It corkscrews,
                                                   Crone-like,
                                                       Into debatable air.

                                                                   'Quickthorn'                    

Other poems take novel views of the relationship between trees and people by intertwining their stories and culture as in John Willby's heart-wrenching poem 'That Tree’s Mother Saved My Life' and Pauline Plummer's 'The Baobab'. They remind us that trees stretch beyond our lifetime, offering more than background for our experiences. 

With the upsurge of interest in rewilding, climate change and  our co-existence with the natural world this book's release is timely, but I really enjoyed the well-rounded view of the poems, looking at more than just trees' environmental impact. The book turns towards the resonance trees offer with our inner worlds, those spaces where poetry resides. 

Follow more on Facebook @Ironfestival for more reviews and details of the book and its blog tour.

Seasonal Changes

My garden is a gold splash of autumn, my favourite season. Apples thudding onto the unmowed grass, the buttery sun catching the red leaves of the maples. I have an urge to tidy and gather in supplies, inside and out, to finish harvesting my allotment and ready it for winter, to clear the flower beds of debris, to pack away tools for my winter hibernation. 

With words, I've been kicking through my poems like fallen leaves, noticing a gem here, a spoiled windfall there. I edit a line, I submit a few poems, slowly. There is no urgency with my work, though I know time is running short there as well. My course starts up again tomorrow, I have a book review due in a few days, but I layer words a few at a time, waiting for them to build up into some rich mélange. 

My writing group is planning to go back to face-to-face meetings next week. I can't attend the first one, but with our second wave starting, I have to admit I'm nervous of jumping back into that part of normal life. Not all of it has to do with the virus. I've enjoyed having an online side of my writing life. I've joined mentoring, virtual book launches and workshops in the UK along with my local writing group from the comfort of my home. Being in Finland I wouldn't be able to take advantage of many of these opportunities without the impetus driven by the various lockdowns around the world. 

It's less stressful being online when you have kids and unreliable support, but I also find the social side easier. Seeing everyone in front of me, having to unmute to take my turn makes it easier for me to read social cues. I'm probably still awkward and too vocal, but somehow it's easier to step back and take a moment than when I'm caught up in the pressure of being surrounded by people, trying to find the right time to speak up.

It's a toss-up. I'm afraid online events will dwindle again and I'll be isolated here in my corner of Europe, but it will be good to try and make more local events, now that I've made some connections.  

We'll see what the next few weeks bring, infections are ramping up here, more restrictions coming along. I may not get the chance to see my friends for long, so should maybe jump at it, even masked up. 

Enjoy your week.