Do we need to explain the meaning of what we write, or should we let the reader work them out for themselves? Does it matter whether they fully understand what we are trying to say? What if they come up with their own interpretation that the writer hasn’t considered? Obviously lots of poems, including many fabulous, famous and regularly anthologised ones, have a meaning that is easily understood. This doesn’t diminish their power or worth.…
Should be able to complete loading all my previously posted poems onto my poems page in the next few weeks. A couple added today from January & February last year, including one that made BBC Radio South. The fame!
….that the country entered into the first lockdown? When I say the country, I mean most of us. Some who disobeyed the rules received £10K fines. As we know, many of those who made the rules just carried on partying. But that’s for another post. I’m writing this whilst looking out into our garden. It’s a little too cold to sit there for long, but it is a glorious blue-skied spring morning. During that first…
Apparently a sandstorm is on its way to the UK from the Sahara. Storm Celia is expected to hit southern Britain later today or tomorrow. This news reminded me of a prose piece I wrote a few years ago, following a similar event. It’s part of a pamphlet / book length sequence of flash fiction / prose poems which I am hoping to publish later this year, or early next. This is the only place…
All my poems posted on this website back in 2020 are now available to scroll through on the ‘poems’ tab at the top of the page. I’ll start adding the poems from my posts last year in due course.
Finally! My first success of 2022 (I’ve been focussing on existing projects and manuscript work primarily rather than sending stuff out so far this year). My prose poem At the Landfill of Memories has been selected for this year’s anthology (out of over 1,300 poems submitted). Dempsey & Windle are my publishers, so I like to enter this competition to support them (I don’t enter that many contests). It doesn’t mean I automatically get work…
3 poems added to my poems page here on this website – they all appeared in blog posts in August and September 2020 – none have appeared in print.
I’ve just been reading an article on the Open Democracy website about concerns over Russian money being pumped into the Conservative party, and how those donations, both to the central party and individual constituency MPs, might be a bit of a security concern. It’s from 2019. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/revealed-russian-donors-have-stepped-tory-funding/?utm_source=tw Another article (and there are plenty of them) from 2020 names a range of government ministers whose constituency parties have taken Russian donations; https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-report-donors-boris-johnson-conservative-party-2020-7?r=US&IR=T Our Prime Minister proudly…
Just added the poems from my posts in June 2020 to my page of poems that have appeared on this website. There are three in total. I didn’t post anything in July 2020, so the next of these updates will be for August & September 2020. At some point next week I guess.