I should be...

...starting my assignment (long fiction). But I don't have a novel inside me.

Yes. Ok, ok. I am one of the few people I know who isn't bursting with novel-itis.

I wrote the 'first chapter' of my non-existent novel for a course homework a few weeks back. I confess it was enjoyable. But now, I simply don't know how to continue it. The bit I was interested in, has been written. Why would I want to write more?

But write I must.

I'm heading to Nottingham this weekend and hopefully I'll catch this Happenstance event. Maybe a long dull trip on a train and a spot of poetry listening will cure my lack of second chapter.

Synonyms for locust

It appears there aren't any. Apart from grasshopper and insect and cicada, none of which will do. I might check out the latin name, but I'm not convinced that will cut the mustard either.

What is this for, I hear you ask. It's for the latest exercise in my online poetry course with Jen Hadfield and The Poetry School

I am trying to 'negate' Robin Robertson's 'Drowning in Co Down' and somehow my negation of a poem about water and weight and drink has let me to locusts.

Some days I'm gobsmacked my brain works at all.

TS Eliot Prize Readings at the Southbank Centre 15 January 2012

TS Eliot Prize Readings at the Southbank Centre, Sunday 15 Jan 2012, 7pm

Booking open now

"The T S Eliot Prize Readings herald a brilliant year of poetry at Southbank Centre. Join us to experience the best poetry of the last 12 months, with the shortlisted poets reading their work live, introduced by Ian McMillan, poet and presenter of BBC Radio 3's The Verb. In association with the Poetry Book Society."

10% off before December.

With the 10% off rear stalls are £10.40 a ticket plus booking fee, front stalls are a few quid more.
50% off for concessions.

Nottingham Poetry Competition - poetry merit award

I had a letter this morning telling me that one of my poems had been awarded a merit prize in the Nottingham Open Poetry Competition.

I know from Helena Nelson's post on her Happenstance blog that there were 664 entries in all, three winners and only ten merit prizes.

So, in the words of James Brown 'I feel good'.

Magic Realism

The task: One 'magic realism' short story to write during the next fortnight.

Oh shit.

I've tried.
I am trying (so my friends often tell me).
But I just don't get it.

I was thinking of writing a story about a woman who spent so much time doing housework that she turned into her household implements. Then I realised that this is rather too similar to life writing and we covered that last year.

I am off to boil a litre of water and pour myself out.

Make it Strange - Jen Hadfield

I have a crick in my neck and a stiff back right now, probably because I've been hunched over a laptop all week putting together a poem for this week's exercise of my online poetry course. The course is run by The Poetry School and this course, tutored by one of my favourite poets, Jen Hadfield, is called  'Make it Strange'.

And what is surfacing certainly is strange. But at the same time quite quite magical.

There is a wonderliciously liberating feeling as you grub around on your elbows under the barbed wire of self-censorship and smuggle out a word or two that would never have otherwise got to the page.

Great quote on Fiona Moore's blog

"The progress of any writer is marked by those moments when he manages to outwit his own inner police system"

(Ted Hughes, in What rhymes with ‘secret’?, 1982)


Oh, how true, that is. Have spent the day trying to sneak past my police with a large poetic swag bag slung over my shoulder.