Who Will We Blame Now?
Posted: May 2, 2011 Filed under: News, Poetry Leave a comment »Who will we blame now?
As we stand in our squares
Baying for our point of view
Now that an eye for an eye
Has been ticked off our list
So proud, so proud
And I can’t look my race
In the face
Anymore
(On the orgasmic, jingoistic American reaction to the news that Osama Bin Laden had been assassinated.)
No Rhyme nor Reason (To me)
Posted: March 14, 2010 Filed under: Musings, Poetry Leave a comment »
I got paid this week. Yahoo!
So I decided to treat myself and go into Waterstones in Cambridge and buy some books.
They have a 3 for 2 offer on at the mo so I picked myself three books (you can see what I got on the sidebar.) I also bought Simon Armitage’s Selected Poems. Now this wasn’t on offer and cost me £9.99. The other books all had original prices of between £7.99 and £8.99.
I didn’t mind that. I like Simon’s work and I’d already got some bargains but it struck me that I’ve never seen poetry books on any offers in the High Street. (The one exception being Borders but they were closing down so it doesn’t count.)
But why is poetry priced at such a premium?
I’m sure that someone could come up with all sorts of costings as to why they charge at least £2 more for a book half the thickness. One being, I suppose, that they don’t sell many so they have to charge more to make a profit from the print run.
But then Amazon have all these books on offer so maybe it’s the cost of the shop space, leases, rates etc. But if that’s the case, how can they do 3 for 2 offers?
So I’m looking from the punters point of view. There ain’t no bargains to be had with poetry on the High Street, that’s my conclusion.
Seems a shame. They have book offers to encourage people to buy more books.
Poetry could do with that … and I might just save a couple of quid.
Mid-week Musing
Posted: August 12, 2009 Filed under: Musings, Poetry Leave a comment »hating the night
a black warrior
snuffing out the white knight
Mid-week Musing
Posted: August 5, 2009 Filed under: Musings, Poetry Leave a comment »The walk into work
Leaden legs
Freedom fantasies
Call me a taxi
Mid-week Musing
Posted: July 29, 2009 Filed under: Musings, Poetry Leave a comment »red wine
fruit blanket on tingling tongue
dulling the synapses
comprehension takes a step back
Mid-week Musing
Posted: July 22, 2009 Filed under: Musings, Poetry Leave a comment »i hate the sting
i hate the process
i love the result
why wasn’t man created
the shaveless human being?
Poetry in emotion
Posted: May 28, 2009 Filed under: General, News, Poetry 2 Comments »
After the debacle involving Oxford’s professor of poetry election; the unpleasant idea of competitiveness has reared its ugly head in the literary world.
At all levels it appears to me that writing is generally a very friendly community, but deep down do we all harbour dark thoughts about other peoples success?
And what would we be prepared to do to forestall it?
In an ideal world we could all have success, but it just doesn’t work like that.
I, like everyone else, am in competition for everything all the time. That’s what makes me better anyway. I have to do my best to be in with a chance of success. It stops me getting lazy and complacent.
But it’s common courtesy that I do have control over. Call it morals or doing the right thing. Call it common sense, treating others like I would like to be treated myself.
But it matters. Fair play shows a respect for your fellow artists and that’s important.
Writing Plans
Posted: May 12, 2009 Filed under: Poetry, Short Stories, Writing 4 Comments »
Well once again I pen this note to you, my dear bot reader. My trusty subscriber to my witterings.
I haven’t yet embarked on a novel, or even thought about doing so.
Why?
Well I need a bit more practice really, so I thought I’d try smaller chunks of writing instead. Maybe it’s lazy, but I hate the idea of starting something that major only to find I’m scrapping the beginning before I’ve even finished the first draft. I might end up writing 50,000 words and scrapping 49,900 of them. I can’t face that just yet. I suppose I’ll have to wield the scalpel at some future point (Errgh!) but for now I’d much rather dump 500 words than hundred times that.
Yeah, it’s an excuse, I think I must be lazy.
So what am I doing?
Well, scribbling a few little poems and having a go at some flash fiction of which I submitted a few pieces in the last few days. So I’ll let you know how it goes on, but don’t hold your breath dear bot, even computers need air!
It takes me awhile to find my feet and I’m still crawling around the floor blundering into obvious objects.
But I’ll get there, eventually.
Regards,
G.
Practice
Posted: May 1, 2009 Filed under: Internet, Poetry, Short Stories, Writing Leave a comment »
Practice makes perfect they always say but at the end of the day motivation is also required before you can even begin to practice. There has to be a point to practice and submitting and maybe seeing your work on the net helps to provide the motivation to practice.
So it’s good that there’s plenty of websites out there that can fulfil that need. Two that I found useful (courtesy of links found on Niks great blog) are ‘The Pygmy Giant’ and ‘Rainy City Stories’. They help give focus, for me, to the practice of writing. They both accept stories and poetry but the latter is for stories involving Manchester. The former is shorter (less than 800 words) flash fiction type stories.
The third is ‘Six Sentences’ which does exactly what it says on the tin. A story in six sentences. If that’s not providing focus I don’t know what is!
I think this is good because I can find it difficult to know where to start. Having these preset frameworks provides that starting point. I shall be having a go at submissions for these three sites in the next few weeks.
Now I just need to find the time …
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