Blog Posts and Literary Journals

A personal conversation which might be of wider interest

A friend messaged me with a question:

Noticing talk lately about poems posted on blogs or websites = publishing. Therefore holding back on posting new poems on my blog as hoping to submit to mags etc., many of which stipulate "not previously published". Not knowledgable about this, trying to find out more. What do you know?

I replied:

I know that it is a grey area. Whether or not blog posts are regarded as prior publication depends on the particular editor of the particular journal/anthology. Also your facebook posts could be ineligible, depending whether your profile is Public or Friends Only. Some editors/publications have a blanket policy of no prior online appearance. Others don't count posting on personal blogs or in closed online groups as prior publication. Check, but I think the groups you publish to on fb are not closed. (This is usually not specifically applicable to other online groups in the wider blogosphere, such as Poets United and others I use, because we don't publish our poems IN the groups, we supply a link to those posts at our own blogs.)

Some poets get around this by putting things on blogs very briefly, perhaps labelled as – and being – drafts, and removing them within a week or two before submitting elsewhere. Some don't put on their blogs anything they wish to submit elsewhere. They may perhaps post such poems to their blogs after publication, with appropriate accreditation of 'first publication' as one would if publishing one's own book.

Others, such as me, blog on regardless. There are enough journals and anthologies, many online and some offline, who will include pieces that have appeared on blogs and in social media. I don't bother much anyway unless I am invited, which still sometimes happens.

On the one hand, it could be said that I can afford to thumb my nose, as I was well published in decades past and made a name for myself. I think it was more like five minutes of fame, but it's true that I had and enjoyed it.

On the other hand, I look at my blog stats and know I get many more readers by publishing to a blog than I would by appearing in even the most prestigious Australian literary journals. (Some of my old colleagues seem offended if I say that! But it's not a denigration of the literary journals or their contents to note, from their own statistics, that they have a lesser reach. It's just the nature of things.)

There is also the fact that – for reasons of convenience, really – I don't do spoken word performance any more, so no longer have the grassroots community reach in that kind of way. I get it in a different way, in a different but sometimes overlapping community, via my blog.

Depends what you want: to be read, or to have some standing in literary circles. (Both, of course; but perhaps, as things are, one must predominate.) There is a widespread view that poetry on blogs is not of a very high standard; that people publish any old thing without it having been workshopped or edited, and readers who couldn't tell a poem from a Hallmark greeting card rush to praise it. (The same view is held about self-published ebooks.) There is some truth in that; I have seen some horrendous examples thereof.

However, the poets who publish in the online poetry groups I've found have a commitment to poetry, develop rapidly through communion with other poets (just as poets do in offline groups and events) and many of them are, in my opinion, as good as anyone publishing to more 'literary' acclaim. (Well, maybe not quite as good as Mary Oliver, but – you know – she's God. *Smiling.* Some aren't too bloody far off, all the same.) Many of them have a high reputation in online poetry circles. Does that count? Well yes, judgment of one's peers and all that.

I think my opinion of their excellence counts for something, having been a teacher of poetry writing at tertiary level, a reviewer in respected publications, and a publisher of prize-winning books of poetry.

As for my own esteem, it is indeed true that I received much validation when I was younger, and no longer need anyone to assure me I'm a competent poet. I think I am also pretty good by now at assessing fairly objectively which of my pieces are working well, and which could be improved or scrapped. Above all, people tell me when something moves them deeply, in comments which go beyond the politely encouraging.

So yes, I do feel I can afford to thumb my nose at more traditional avenues now. It comes at a price, though. While Australian poets (and readers) of my generation remember me well, newer ones coming up have probably never heard of me. I don't, I think, have a name that will last in Australian poetry. Once I longed for literary standing in the present and fame in posterity, while some of of my confreres said,'It's all ephemeral; let's be heard NOW.' Funnily enough, in age our positions have reversed!

For you (and others) who didn't seek and get that validation years ago, it may well be important to pursue traditional paths of publication at this point, pay your dues and earn the respect you deserve. After that you can choose where to go next. Perhaps in both directions at once; there are those who do that too.

You could put the blog on hold until later – either deleting it entirely, leaving it up as a record, or changing the setting to private so only you would see it.

Or you could keep it going and choose what to put on it, e.g. stuff ABOUT your writing, such as the chapbook publicity that's already there. And/or maybe poems you think good enough to share with the world, but don't particularly wish to submit to journals.

Basically you should do what YOU want. Life's too short not to! Hopefully this helps you make a more informed choice.

Ten Things Not to Say to a Writer

This topic has been trending on twitter lately.  Here are my tweets on the subject:

So, are you still writing poetry?

Have you been published?

Should I have heard of you?

I have a fascinating life story. If you write it, you'll make lots of money.

What kind of poems do you write? (Unanswerable, except by, 'Er ... all kinds'.)


Read more, by many writers at #TenThingsNotToSayToAWriter (scroll down past the ad). As one of them remarks, the list is obviously longer than ten! I think you'll relate.

What are your own pet hates, fellow writers? Please share in the comments.

What I Learned from Week One

... of the Finding Your Way Home course.

We are asked to journal about this.

One thing I have learned is that having a special spot for writing, as we are invited to find, doesn't work for me. Writing happens wherever I am. Often that is at the computer. Often it is somewhere else with iPad — anywhere else, from bedroom to dining-room to park to chiropractor's waiting room.

I have also learned that I am definitely now one who writes on to a screen instead of with paper and pen. Who woulda thought it, a few years ago? It's just a preference, but a surprising one. I can't bring myself to go back to a paper notebook, even for the sake of this course, even as an exercise. Not that we have been asked to; it's not a requirement. But it seems kinda assumed, probably unconsciously. I'm sure I am still in the minority among 'creative' writers.

And I have not so much learned as confirmed that working on poetry takes precedence over pretty much anything else, including 'mindful writing'. Sometimes — often — I write my 'small stones' in verse, but I still give precedence to other poems which are not doing double duty as exercises in mindfulness.

Though, I suppose, all poems require a degree of mindfulness....

Rethinking my Poetry

Oh dear — just read through the last few months' verses (on The Passionate Crone) and was struck by how banal and prosey most of them are!

I have often noted that my poetry blog gets far more viewers than any Australian lit. mag. Maybe this is not such a great idea, when what viewers are seeing consists largely of first drafts!

This happens from time to time — looking at one's poems and suddenly perceiving them, en masse, as simply awful.  Or perhaps on this occasion it is because I have just been reading the beautiful words of Patti Smith in Just Kids. Not only does she write like a dream; much of the story is about the making of art — innovative art.

For so long, influenced by my love of haiku, I've tried to make poems that are very plain and clear. I think I've gone too far! At any rate, the only ones that look good to me now are where I've explored form — particularly lesser-known forms such as the bref doublé, the sijo, even the paradelle.

I don't make New Year resolutions as a rule, but this year I seem to be making a few. A new one is to refrain (at least most of the time) from writing poems to prompts — because usually one has only a few days at most to complete the poem. Instead I am really going to do what I promised myself last year but didn't: go through all these drafts and either turn them into poetry that sings (or makes some other artistic impact) or else discard them.

I'll very likely make an exception for form prompts, especially if I get an opportunity to explore forms new to me. And I might be turning some of the lack-lustre free verse into form.

I expect I'll still share poems with the Poets United and dVerse communities, but in their weekly general poemfests rather than responding to specific prompts. And I'll certainly share rewrites with my facebook poetry communities ... except, I suppose, the Free Verse one.

There are also two books to produce — collaborations — of poems that ARE working. Keeps me off the streets!

How Personal Do You Get In Your Poetry?

I've just been participating in an interesting discussion on this topic, instituted by Brian Miller at dVerse Poets Pub. As usual, Brian raises questions which make me think, and I make discoveries about myself. This is what I said this time, in part responding to things others said:

Fascinating to read everyone’s responses! As for me, it must be clear to anyone who reads my stuff that I’m essentially a confessional poet, letting it all hang out.

I think there are two issues here: what do you write, and what do you post? In the writing, I am committed to being truthful – my truth, the truth of my feelings and observations; not necessarily the same thing as objective fact. When it comes to the possibility of hurting or embarrassing someone, I can choose to refrain from posting something to my blog, or even from submitting to a lit mag or anthology (though that would have less chance of being seen by the wrong eyes, so I might risk it). But I think the original writing must be authentic.

That being said, I do sometimes write fiction in verse too, which I guess can be confusing for readers. And I sometimes write of myself in the third person, as a literary experiment rather than a disguise. What I think I am doing is creating art – so it would be ideal if the poems could be received as themselves, as works of art, without reference to the personal (except insofar as they strike chords in readers relating to their own experiences). That is probably impossible, though, in the blogosphere where we get to know the people along with their poetry – and it’s nice to get the personal comments too. I just have to accept the necessity of sometimes explaining: ‘That’s not about me’.

I don’t think there is any word or subject that is not fair game for poetry. But I do think they must be used for good reason – because the word is the absolutely right one in that context; or the subject is one which demands that you write of it.

People have different ideas on religion and politics. I write from my personal truth in those matters too. I don’t set out to offend anyone, but if anyone is offended simply because I express opinions different from theirs, well as far as I’m concerned that’s their problem.

Above all, I bow to the demands of the poem.

Interview with Aussie writer, Helen Patrice

Helen Patrice is the author of one of my favourite books, the verse novel A Woman of Mars, of which the acclaimed SF author Ray Bradbury says: 'Helen Patrice's poems are little love letters not only to the Red Planet but also to the sense of alien wonder that is so often missing from imaginative fiction and poetry. Bravo to her!' 

She is also known for her columns in NOVA and Living Now (Australia) irregular appearances in Circle Magazine and Sage Woman (USA), and has had poems and articles in a variety of other publications —literary, magickal and mainstream. Currently she shares her poems with the private facebook group Free Verse Weekends.

As well, she is one of my best friends — but I would think highly of her writing anyway, I promise, and trust the same goes for the nice things she says (below) about mine. In fact, the appreciation of each other's writing caused the friendship, not the other way about.

I asked the questions I personally wanted answered, thinking that they would probably be the same ones to interest others.

Rosemary: I’ve long known you as a naturally gifted poet, columnist and blogger who has also written some lovely short stories. What form of writing did you start with, and how old were you then?

Helen: I was in primary school when I started writing, likely about nine years old. I know I was playing word games then, and forcing my best friend to play them with me. We’d select our favourite ten tv programmes, and take it in turns to write five lines of a story, each time adding in another show. A lot of fun. My friend noticed that I was pretty tough on character continuation, and following through a plot line. She didn’t care, but I sure did. If I mentioned Dr Who in the first five lines, I sure wasn’t going to just forget about him in line 55. It was a natural progression to start writing my own stories, and some fan fiction. By the end of primary school, I was showing my stories to the librarian, Dawn Bursey, who bless her, encouraged me. So, fiction was my arena for many years.

R: Was it always your goal to be a writer, as in your primary occupation, or did you have other career ideas when you were growing up?

H: From age nine, I knew I wanted to be a writer. Astronaut came in maybe a year earlier. I went so far as to apply to the air force when I was about to graduate high school, on the basis that NASA’s astronaut qualifications base was: American citizenship (I figured I could marry some Yank, no problem), air force training, and ten thousand hours of flying time. Sure, I could do all that. Several problems: I didn’t know any Americans, the air force didn’t want me, I wore glasses and that precluded flight training, and at that time, the air force didn’t let women fly the planes. Writer seemed easier after that. I never gave up hope however, and sent my resume to NASA once a year up until they retired the space shuttle programme. I can’t tell you how many rejection slips I had from them, telling me to go get a science degree.

R: How have you supported yourself while trying to ‘make it’?

H: Let’s see: checkout chick; public servant; leaf polisher for the public service; clerical work; teaching creative writing, tarot, belly dance, meditation, yoga, palmistry, and astrology; doing tarot readings; working in a crystal shop; integration aide; house cleaning; ghost writer; one dreadful night on a sex phone line; child care worker; professional declutterer; belly dancer. If there’s anything else, it’s been lost in the mists of my mind.

R: This is a digression, but I’m sure everyone else will want to know too — what was so dreadful about the sex line?

H: I put the kids to bed, and clocked onto the sex line. I was dressed in old pyjamas, and fluffy slippers, and had the ironing board set up. I had a set of headphones on, and within minutes, the first call came through, and I found myself telling the man that I was wearing black cut out lace knickers and bra, and that I was restless and hot. It was erotic auto-pilot, while the guy had a heavy breathing attack down the line at me. This went on for several hours. I got through the ironing, chopped up vegies for a casserole the next day, and then I started getting tired. I'm not a night owl. I had two small children who had to get to school and kinder in the morning. I was supposed to log off the sex line around 5am, and I knew I'd have to get my kids up around 7. It was 1am. I was tired. Some bloke phoned up, and wanted some ridiculous scenario, which I blathered on about. We were meant to keep the guys on the line as long as possible. The sex part was over with fairly quickly, and you moved on to building a fantasy life with them. Where you'd live, what sort of life you'd have, where you'd holiday, what sort of shower you'd have so he could peek in at you each morning, blah, blah, blah. I reached the end of my creativity, as I sat watching some evangelical tv show with the sound off. I wanted to go to bed. The guy on the phone wanted to know what I was doing right that minute. I sighed. "Sitting on the couch, watching religious tv," I said, and hung up. I phoned in, logged off, and never went back. I couldn't do it.

R: For much of your adult life you have been a single mother to two profoundly deaf children, one of whom is also autistic. I know something of how this has impacted your life; how has it affected you as a writer?

H: For many years, I didn’t write at all. The shell shock of it was profound, and I felt I had no voice any more, nothing to say that wasn’t the stuttered words ‘deaf’, ‘autism’, ‘help!’. When I did begin writing again, my foci had changed greatly. It was as though, at long last, I’d been touched by life. I’d been down in the mud where it gets gritty and real, and my characters had more to them, I’d seen the good and bad in people, and I’d seen the amazing bravery of my son, trying to be with us through the miasma of autism and hearing impairment. Finally, I wrote about it. I’ve written one unpublished memoir about my daughter’s hearing loss, up until age twelve when she received her cochlear implant. I’ve written poems about autism, and several articles. The memoir about my son is still to come, if I’m brave enough to write it. Sometimes, when my writing feels fragmented and doesn’t make sense, I can feel autism sitting in the back of my own head, watching, and I understand all over again how it must be for David.

R: How hard has it been to persist in (a) writing (b) trying to get published?

H: You’re speaking to someone who’s just announced dramatically on facebook that they are quitting writing, knowing full well that I’m only on hiatus. Persisting through everything has been both curse, and lifeline. I’ve felt dragged from my family by the urge to write, and dragged from writing by the guilt that pulls me back to parenting. When my brain happily rewired itself to move from fiction to poetry, apparently with no going back, I thought I’d lost said mind. I wondered what on earth was going on. I wanted to quit, sure that I’d gone mad, or that I’d just lost it completely. Then I saw that I’d been a poet all along, and that it was no wonder my short stories were so very short, and that my characters were light brush stroke sketches.

In terms of getting published, persistence and an unattractive thick skin help. I was once proud of my huge collection of rejection slips, declaring that they proved I was a working writer. After I had the kids, and suffered post-natal depression, I became very sensitive to criticism and couldn’t bear to look at the rejections or suffer too many. I stopped submitting.

I’m now happily medicated. I don’t mind saying this. I think clinical chronic depression is a bogeyman that needs to have the light of day shone on it. I have depression, have apparently suffered from it since my mid-teens. After I had the kids, it became chronic and very bad, and I never ‘picked myself up’. In 2008, I was diagnosed, and the doctor and I found the right pill, and I have not looked back since. I still have my bad times, but I know a lot more about managing them, and making allowances, and am slowly starting to submit again in volume.

Getting my book published was luck. I’d made no submissions of the manuscript. My girlfriend Marianne Plumridge thought the collection was good, and through her husband Bob, a well known science fiction artist, she knew publishers and editors. She showed it to the right one, and boom, a few days later, he said he was publishing it!

R: I was in total agreement with Marianne. I’m very glad that she had the contacts to do something about it, and that our judgment has been so beautifully vindicated. If I may back-track a bit, when did that rewiring of your brain happen? Was it recent? (I thought you wrote some charming short stories early on.)

H: I would estimate about eight years ago. My short stories kept getting shorter and shorter, with little characterisation. I was having less and less success in the traditional short story field, with a beginning, a middle and an ending, with plot, character, theme. I found myself honing in more and more on a single vision moment in a story and just wanting to tell that bit, with the rest as window dressing. Then I stopped writing for a couple of years, and found myself absolutely exhausted at the idea of building a short story, finding it way too much effort.

R: Sounds a bit like me as a novelist. The few times I’ve tried it, I’ve bored myself stupid very quickly.  So, what happened next?

H: I had lunch with Earl Livings and bemoaned my non-writing status. He prompted me to get The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron off my bookshelf and actually do the 12 week programme to recover my creativity. Now, I'd had this book for a few years, read it and thought 'Yeah, yeah, sounds good, one day maybe'. The day had come. I started it, in the middle of winter, where the view out my bedroom window was grey concrete, a strip of clover grass about three feet wide, a dead lemon tree, and the grey back fence. I did my morning pages in bed each morning, exploring my depression(and getting the first inkling that perhaps I was chronically depressed and that this was perhaps not normal), exploring my ailing relationship, exploring what I might want from my life.

Then, out of nowhere, the poems started. Pouring out of me, sometimes three each morning, coming directly out of the morning pages. Once the twelve weeks finished, the poetry died for a little while, and so I attempted a short story that just died in the first page. Try as I might, I could not progress the story, and finally realised I didn't want to. I wanted to concentrate on a single moment in the story. So, I told that and had a paragraph from a short story. I messed around with it, trying to pull it out, like taffy. No go. It took weeks before I realised that it wanted to be a poem. So, my life as a poet began, and I remember sending you my monthly poetry output for your opinion.

R: It was mostly terrific stuff even then! Your natural aptitude seems to be for free verse, though I know you write haiku too. Apart from haiku, did you ever study form or did you just bypass it? (I always thought one needed a good grounding in form in order to write free verse well, but you appear to give the lie to that theory.)

H: I did do some study of form, under Jennie Fraine, at Frankston TAFE, back in 1988. I joined her poetry class and she took us through practice of various forms, before we moved to free verse. I was never much good at form, though, didn’t like the constrictions, and was relieved when, after one term, we could do as we liked. Every now and then, Rosemary, you’ll mention a form that sounds interesting and I’ll have a disastrous mess with it in my journal, before deciding all over again that ‘fuck this shit, it’s back to chopping up sentences’.

R: Your poetry is a lot more than merely chopping up sentences! You seem to have a sure instinct for line endings, natural rhythms and so forth. How much crafting do you do at the time of writing? (For myself, a so-called first draft might be more like a tenth, only it all happens as part of the initial creation.)

H: How much crafting do I do at the time of writing? Very little. I work with the breath when it comes to line endings, where I want the reader to pause. Or where I can see a play on words, or two possible meanings if I break a sentence where I do. Most of the poems you see on Free Verse Weekends are written on the site, as is. No work, beyond the initial idea, and wanting to say it. I think this is why most of my poems are short. That 'small river stone' of an idea that just has to be said economically. Sometimes, when I come to the page, or the group, I have no idea what I'm going to say, thinking 'surely this time I'm all tapped out', yet something appears. I can't say it's always good, but it's mostly first draft. I don't analyse too much what I do, for fear that if you analyse what is in the cake, it no longer tastes as nice.

R: I hate you. Well, no I don’t; I like playing with form sometimes, and wouldn’t want not to be able to. All the same, to get results like yours so easily … ! Despite your strengths as a poet, I always thought your great dream was to be a successful fiction writer. Do your recent verse novel, A Woman of Mars, and the new one in the pipeline satisfy that urge, or do you still long to get a prose novel published too?

H: My great dream WAS to have a prose novel published. I saw myself having written a best seller of some sort (who doesn’t, really?) and appearing on the Don Lane Show. I wanted to tell him that I too would like to punch James Randi out. Never happened. The Don Lane Show was cancelled, I never wrote the book, and then, last year, Don Lane himself passed away. I believe James Randi is still going strong, so there’s hope I might get to punch him out.

I have to admit that I’m simply not prepared to do the work in terms of a novel. I’ve written four novels now, all through NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, where you write 50,000 words over the course of November). Chicklit, murder mystery set in Melbourne’s belly dance community, science fiction, dark urban fantasy. I’ve never rewritten any of them. Once I’ve told the story, I’ve told it, and have little interest in going back over it.

Rewrites, and the thought of line edits, and galley proofs make me want to be sick. So, unless I can produce a perfect novel in the first draft, it ain’t gonna happen. Not unless I get locked in a room for months on end with nothing else to do but rewrite my stuff.

A Woman of Mars does not quite satisfy that urge, but it will have to do.

R: At present you’re working on a ‘salacious memoir’ about the men in your life, and have begun a series of poems about them. Will this memoir be all in verse, or will it include prose passages too?

H: Oh, the prose part was just too hard. All this dreadful whiny, angsty stuff came out. In poems, not so much. I could cut to the chase, my perceptions of how it all was. So, now I have around 25 poems, with a few more to add from my files, and will likely end up with around 35 poems all up, to be put together in a chapbook, and then, if I get brave, perhaps marketed as an ebook. I doubt any publisher would be willing to put their hand up and say “Hell, yeah, sex poems from an unknown!”

R: Are you writing the memoir as catharsis for yourself, entertainment for others, or both?

H: All of that. I didn’t look on it as catharsis, but what a great thing it’s been to be as bitchy as I like, knowing that it’s first draft, knowing that I’ll change the names, knowing that considering how uncharitable I’ve been in some cases, the guys are not likely to put their hands up and say: “Hey that’s me in poem 24, hey, everyone, look, look what she said about me, I’m gonna sue!”. And, when I’ve shared the poems, there’s been a certain amount of giggling, and gasping.

R: What I’ve seen of it is often very funny, yet serious at the same time. I can hardly wait for the completed volume. You were recently chosen as one of only 12 poets to participate in a weekend workshop with the legendary Marge Piercy, whose work both you and I greatly admire. Was she formidable, inspiring, nurturing, all of the above ...?

H: Marge Piercy is my poetry goddess, and when I applied to the workshop, I doubted I’d get in, and was greatly surprised when she replied less than 24 hours later, in an email saying: “I want you, but CAN you get here?” I stared and stared at the screen, thinking ‘Holy crap, the Goddess emailed me!’ You betta believe I could get there, any way possible. I didn’t care if she lived in Outer Mongolia. Marge said come, and I went.

I was terrified before the workshop, wondering if I was THAT good, or THAT bad and Marge needed to tell me in person. “Hello, I really must tell you that you are crap, and to stop writing straight away. Please, do the universe a favour.”

When I found out that applications were in the hundreds, and that only 12 were chosen, I was gobsmacked.

Then, on the first day of the week-long workshop, I saw her in the foyer of the Seniors Centre, in Wellfleet. Short, stocky, a wild frizz of black hair, and, well, I have to say it, a rather dowdy outfit covered in cat hair. She has glaucoma and thus cannot see her clothes that well, and I daresay, even if she could, she would not give much of a damn.

She was lovely. Nurturing, direct, honest, and not formidable in any way, except in terms of her steel-trap mind which remembers everything it reads. Her knowledge is extraordinary, and it’s no wonder her poems are full of such beautiful detail. She knows the name for everything, and has the curiosity of a kitten. She is opinionated, passionate when she feels she has been wronged, and was gently encouraging of the only man in the workshop, joking on the first day that he was brave.


R: Were you the only non-American in this workshop?

H: I was indeed the only non-American. There were several from Alabama, a couple from around New York, one from Colorado, one from Minnesota, and oh, I can’t remember where else now. I do know that Melinda, who has the most delightful southern accent, would beg me to read anything from an English poet, in my ‘English’ accent. I sounded English? I don’t bloody think so! In turn, I wanted her to read just about anything.

R: What in particular did you gain from your attendance?

H: I think most writers go to workshops to find out if they’re any good. They want to hear that what they’re doing is not crazy person nonsense. I got a wide exposure to American poetry, and an introduction to ‘Poets and Writers’ magazine, which I’d not encountered until then, but is a marvelous tool for those wanting to publish in the States. I got reassurance that I was indeed a poet, and a pretty good one, which is nice to know. Since then, I’ve carried a little kernel of confidence inside me. Even now, when I’m feeling discouraged about the publishing side of things and feel it’s all too hard, I know that I am a good writer, and that I am just not appreciated. Does that sound martyred and wanky? Yes. It’s more that I’m a good writer, but just not willing to play the right games, curry favour, and network myself sick. I go to science fiction conventions, forget completely to schmooze editors and publishers and attend the right parties, and instead spend my time buying steampunk costumes, talking with random people, and acting the goat at the Baen Books room party.

R: Who are your favourite (a) poets (b) fiction writers?

H: You know, I hate this question, because it can depend on the day, the phase of the Moon, or whether or not the kitten is being nice to me. I will thus list the mainstays, and ignore who I might be passionately in love with this week.

Poets: Great Goddess Marge Piercy of course; Carol Ann Duffy for her marvellous ‘The World’s Wife’ collection of poems; Mary Oliver for seeing the sacred in the ordinary; Jennie Fraine for bringing Africa alive for me; yourself dear, for your wide vista of topics and for being both tough and gentle; Billy Collins for his humour and insight; Naomi Shihab Nye is a recent addition, as is Kim Addonizio.

Fiction: Connie Willis. I adore her screwball take on science fiction themes, as well as the heart she brings to some very clinical subjects. Arthur C. Clarke’s earlier works before he got into sequels. Asimov’s short robot stories. Nina Kiriki Hoffman is writing some wonderful fantasy that is gripping and human. I love Mercedes Lackey’s Diana Tregarde series, but she says there will be no more because they don’t sell enough. A pity.

R: I agree with you about quite a few of those! Honoured to be included, and fascinated to learn why. Thank you. Who are your biggest influences as (a) a poet (b) a prose writer?

H: As a poet, my biggest influences are Marge Piercy, Rosemary Nissen-Wade, Carol Ann Duffy, and the writing books of Natalie Goldberg.

As a prose writer, I have to look back to Erma Bombeck, Charles de Lint sometimes, Connie Willis, and, of all people, John Birmingham. Whenever I get jammed up, I go read ‘He Died With A Felafel in His Hand’ and realize that anything goes.

R: Well, thank you again, for putting me in such company! Certainly both Piercy and Goldberg are among my influences too, and I also love Bombeck and de Lint. What advice would you give to aspiring writers?

H: Write, write, write. Get off facebook, get off twitter, myspace, angry birds, and whatever else is holding you in thrall. Put down the Wii, and go to the computer or the blank page and start. It doesn’t matter what. It doesn’t have to be good. What it has to be is words on the page. Write everything – poetry, fan fiction, prose, snatches of plays, whatever. Have a go at everything, hold nothing back, be brave. And when you’re not at the page, get out into the world, stand still, be silent, observe and ask ‘Why?’ Wait for your own answer.

Read voraciously, and not just what you think you’ll like. I used to go to the library and if the author I wanted wasn’t available, I’d often pick the next book along, on the off-chance that maybe a typo in filing meant that Lawrence and Laurence were the same person and I’d find more goodness. I did find goodness, but also some icko stuff as well, and I learned from that too.

R: Good advice! Where can people (a) read your work online (b) buy your book?

H: NOVA magazine, published by Sunrise Publishing, have a fine backlog of my articles. I was their ‘centrefold’ for around five years, writing an article a month for them on their theme. Some of them can be found on the NOVA website.

I also have my own website, which is run by my friend Yvonne Hintz.  There should be some new stuff up on there shortly.

As for my book, ‘A Woman of Mars: poems of an early homesteader’, it is available through PS Publishing, Stanza Press, in the UK. If you go to the site and have a hunt around on there, you should find it. [I've linked direct to their Poetry page. - R.] For those in Australia, I also have a number of copies for sale, and those interested can contact me via my website. $25 excludes postage. Cover by Bob Eggleton, and back cover blurb by none other than Ray Bradbury.

R: I'm very glad to learn of the NOVA website. The magazine has sometimes been hard to get in the small country town where I live. I'm now having a lovely time catching up with all your articles.

*********************************

Update, 2018:

Sadly, Helen's work can no longer be found at the NOVA and Stanza Press links, but some copies of A WOMAN OFMARS are available from Amazon. They are now priced as collector's items, but from some sellers are still affordable.

'River of Stones' — the Process

I’m participating in this month’s ‘a river of stones’ over at my Stones for the River blog. I did it in January too, with great joy, and intermittently between then and now. This time around, I’m noticing more about the process, probably because my husband has joined in this time and his approach is different from mine. Well for one thing, I’m a poet and choose to write my small stones in verse; he’s a story-teller, whether in fiction or memoir, and naturally seeks to make stories out of his small stones. But it’s more than that.

I love his writing, so what I’m about to say isn’t a criticism of that — but I notice he has real trouble simply paying attention to the world around him. He produces lovely pieces that don’t end up on his blog because they’re not actually small stones. They are diary entries, records of events and the way he feels about them. He talks, for instance, of running into a couple of old friends in town yesterday. After reading what he wrote, I know that this event happened and who the people were, what he felt about the exchange, and a little of what was said between them. I know nothing of the surroundings, or what the people looked like, or how their voices sounded — no description. The ‘small stones’ idea is all about getting outside oneself and noticing the world around us. I think it’s OK to bring oneself in if necessary, but from the outside, dispassionately observed. He manages it, but it’s often a struggle.

Back in January Kaspalita, who co-founded the river of stones, posted a piece on just this. It seems many people have the same difficulty. I don’t seem to have quite as much trouble with it, and I put that down to a few years of attempting haiku, tanka and other short forms which train one to pay attention to the world. However I worry that I‘m ‘doing it wrong’ in a different way. Although there isn’t any obligatory length, I keep thinking mine are too long this time. I was convinced that I wrote much shorter ones in January, until I went back and had a look. No, they’re about the same. 

I notice, too, that both my husband and I keep falling into the significance trap. What do I mean by that? I’ve been in a long-term writers’ support group (often by email) with Jennie Fraine and Leah Kaminsky for — good heavens! — 20 years. We are devoted to what we call ‘the anti-significance factor’. One of the earliest things we identified was that trying for deep significance is death to poetry. Or, as my friend Philip Martin used to remark, people don’t like to be buttonholed by a poem and told what to think and feel. Personally, if I try to write something deep and meaningful, it paralyses me, whereas if I just play with words or forms I produce poems — sometimes even deep and meaningful ones. It’s essential to remember that art is play. I think, with a small stone, the thing itself is what matters; no need to weight it down with any extra meaning. But human beings are very good at trying to add extra significance to everything, even the simplest things.

Difficult or not, I think the task is worthwhile, not only for the writing it can produce but even more so to have us engage with the world around us. It even led to me watering my geraniums, which badly needed it, because I stopped to take a good look at them. 

Achievements of a writers' group

I'm the facilitator of WordsFlow, a writers' group that meets weekly at Pottsville Beach Neighbourhood Centre. I used to live at Pottsville and am now a half hour's drive away.

We have our own WordsFlow blog. I'd love to draw your attention to the three most recent posts: an article taking an affectionate look at the group members, by Eddie Blatt; a poem by Nan Doyle which has been widely aired on Australian radio and which listeners fall in love with, and an account by me of our recent presentation of a new computer to an emerging writer from a nearby town.

Collin Kelley Interview

Collin Kelley, from Atlanta, Georgia, is poet, novelist, playwright and journalist. He also has a widely read blog, Modern Confessional, which is both entertaining and informative.

We met in Texas in 2006 when we were both featured guests at the annual Austin International Poetry Festival, and have kept in touch online ever since.

I’m mad about his poetry and own all his poetry books so far. I think he’s a master of free verse and I’m in awe of his technique. Above all, he gets me emotionally every time, whether with wry humour, piercing social criticism or haunting love poems.

In novels I love the unexpected, things I can’t second-guess. Usually I can; therefore I seldom read novels any more. But I did read Collin’s first novel, Conquering Venus. I even bought it. I probably would have bought it anyway because he’s a pal, but I also hoped that this would be a novel I’d actually enjoy, as I like his other writing so much. Sure enough, I loved it. Not boringly predictable, it nevertheless feels ‘right’. It’s the first part of a trilogy; I’m looking forward to the other volumes.

I’m no novelist myself, and don’t want to be. Few poets are. Australians David Malouf and Roger McDonald have managed it successfully, and Americans Marge Piercy and Margaret Attwood are prolific and brilliant in both forms. But it’s rare, so I was intrigued by Collin’s successful venture. He kindly agreed to be interviewed as follows.


SnakyPoet: Why did you decide to branch out from poetry to novels?

Collin Kelley: I always wanted to write novels. I made a few attempts in the 80s and early 90s, but they never went anywhere. In 1995, a trip to London and Paris gave me the framework for Conquering Venus and I was finally able to complete a novel that I thought had substance and might interest readers.

SP: So how long did it take you to write?

CK: Conquering Venus actually started as a screenplay in 1995. I wrote it in about three weeks. In 1996, I had an agent who tried to sell the screenplay in Hollywood, and while all the producers who looked at it liked the story they said it was a big budget art film and no studio would fund it. My agent said I should turn the screenplay into a novel, so I did. I worked on the novel for about three years off and on until it was completed in 2000. From 2000 until the book was finally published in 2009 was a series of agents, contests and assorted publishing wankers who made lots of promises they never kept.

SP: Which is the more satisfying kind of writing for you, poetry or fiction — or are they just different, and equally fulfilling?

CK: I like the immediacy of poetry — the economy of language and the challenge of putting across a feeling or emotion in as few words as possible. With fiction it’s more of a long game, but I try to incorporate the techniques of poetry into my novels as well. I never wanted to be anything but a writer, so the act of writing satisfies me immensely. I’m grateful that I’ve been able to make a living as a writer.

SP: I think all poets would agree that making poems is a thing we can’t not do. Do you find that this now applies to your novel-writing too?

CK: I think so. When I write fiction, I read poetry and when I write poetry, I tend to read more fiction. I already have the outline for the third book in The Venus Trilogy, I’m sequencing a collection of poetry and I plan to start working on a memoir about my misadventures on my many visits to London. I even have an idea for a sci-fi novel.

SP: Wow, you’re running hot! I definitely want to read all those books too. Do you find the novel sells better than the poetry books?

CK: I’ve definitely sold more copies of Conquering Venus than any of my poetry collections, but here in the States if you sell a couple hundred copies of a poetry collection then it’s considered a success. By that measure, I’ve been successful. Better To Travel has sold about 1,000 copies and my chapbook, Slow To Burn, sold out its 300 copy run in a just a year or so. Seven Kitchens Press will release a second edition in August, which is really exciting.

SP: Yes, it is! Where/how can people acquire your books?

CK: Amazon and Barnes & Noble have both the print and ebooks available of Conquering Venus. My poetry collections Better To Travel and After the Poison are at Amazon. The Slow To Burn reissue will be available from Seven Kitchens Press website. Ebook fans can also find Conquering Venus at places like Smashwords and OmniLit.

SP: Was it harder or easier to write the sequel to Conquering Venus?

CK: The challenge with Remain in Light was creating a sequel that continues the story from Conquering Venus, but also stands alone as its own story. My goal is to have each of the novels in the trilogy stand on their own so they can be read in any order. While Conquering Venus is literary fiction with a little magical realism thrown in, Remain in Light shifts in tone and has a more urgent, suspenseful storyline. I think anyone who likes a good mystery and detective story will love Remain in Light.

SP: When will Remain in Light be available?

CK: Since the ebook version of Conquering Venus far outsold the print edition, we’re staggering the release of Remain in Light. The ebook will be out in late October just in time for the holidays and the print will appear in January 2012.

SP: Interesting. I have the print edition of Conquering Venus. Are the ebooks specifically for one kind of e-reader or suitable for all?

CK: It depends on where you buy the ebook. Those bought on Amazon can only be read on a Kindle and those bought at Barnes & Noble can only be read on the Nook. But there are great sites like Smashwords where you can download books in various ebook formats and read them on any device. Conquering Venus is on Smashwords and Remain in Light will be, too.

SP: Do you have a favourite amongst your own poetry books?

CK: I really do love Slow To Burn. I think some of my best work is in there, so I’m thrilled Seven Kitchens Press is bringing it back into print for new readers to discover. The new collection I’m working on now is shaping up to be pretty good, too. I’ll be sending it out to publishers soon.

SP: I love that book too, but I’m also very keen on the others. Good luck with all your new endeavours!

Gil Scott-Heron, Voice of Black Culture, Dies at 62

I didn't know this poet or his work, but I like what my friend Thom Woodruff (aka Thom the World Poet and various other pen-names) writes, for this occasion but more widely applicable:

WHEN A POET DIES
for a short time,every one remembers his/her  lines
They get quoted in bylines(never the full poem)
A picture flashes of them (usually @the height of their fame
Never a picture of them as they lay dying
Never in their last Fat Elvis days
A byline may allude to drugs and sex and children
but it is the poem that will live on-
thin and ruthless,true as spear and fire
If the line is taut and stripped and bare
Naked as newborn and barking @the moon
If each word fits like the coat of your skin
You will wear this poem.You will remember her/him
That is where the point resides-deep inside the flesh of mind
like St Sebastians arrows making martydom
The arrow of truth -a burning poem.

Occupation: Poet

My friend Helen Patrice (aka Satyapriya) is at present on retreat somewhere in North America. This is a recent blog post from her, which she says I may share here:

Sitting above the valley of the creek, I am writing in my journal. A woman stops being dragged about the park by her black dog, and we chat. She smiles at me indulgently.
"So, what do you do?"
"I'm a poet."
I let it hang there, for the first time ever. No adding on 'dance tutor' or 'yogini' or 'columnist' or 'single mother'.
Poet.
An even more indulgent smile from her. "And what does your husband think of that?"
It is obvious that, to her, I fancy myself a poet in my off hours, and am a lucky, indulged stay-at-home wife. She is having a day off work while the office hires professional movers to shift everything to a new building. She WORKS.
I do not have a husband. Have not had one for 16 years. I oscillate between wanting one, and not.
The man I am living with these past ten days could pass as a husband if I let him. Very occasionally I think of him that way, when my mind slips out of gear, and I let down my pointed, jagged guard.
"He likes it just fine," I say. "I earn my keep."
I do not earn much from poetry. I earn something from being a columnist. I once was paid $150 for a ten line poem. If I could get that every day, I'd be laughing.
That shuts her up. She sees only that I am sitting in the sunshine, on a yoga mat, looking out over the valley, a packet of cherries and a bottle of water by my side.
She does not see that every day I wrestle with my pen and page to make them sketch out, in wordplay, the feeling in my head. My arm muscles are the match of any man's, so hard is my work. At the end of each day, if I am lucky, is a pale resemblance to what was inside, and I am empty of anything but the touch of the Goddess. If I am not lucky, I have before me a twitching wretched mess that has no life but will not die.
There is no holiday pay, no sick leave, no bereavement days.
I would have no other job.
The woman and her black dog walk on.

******************************

I want to share it because:
a) I think it’s a lovely piece of writing.
b) I like what she says about the job of being a poet.
c) I’m astounded that, in this day and age, the woman who spoke to her would really ask such a question as, ’What does your husband think of that?’  Shocked, I commented that if feminism is not dead, it’s obviously pretty weak. A fellow-Aussie reminded me that such a comment would be unlikely in her neck of the woods, where people would probably be much more interested in the poem being written. True. I acknowledge in relief that it is a most unlikely comment anywhere in Australia, from anyone. I can’t imagine anyone even thinking like that any more. Even so, it still seems amazingly backward for North America, too. Please tell me it’s atypical!

Why Blog My Poetry?

My blog on MySpace had had 30957 views last time I looked. Those people have given me ‘kudos’ for my writing only 1386 times, and I have received only 2130 comments. Some have been from the same people returning over and over again. Even so, I think that’s a lot more people than would find and like my poetry in any in-print Australian literary magazine.

My MySpace blog includes prose and has been going for four years. On Blogger I have three blogs just for poetry: a haiku page, a page of ‘verse portraits’ and a page for poetry in general. The haiku page was started in January 2007 and has received 736 visitors. The verse portraits began in June 2008 and have had 752 visitors. I started The Passionate Crone, where I post all my other poetry, in May 2006 and it has had 6973 visitors to date (already 30 this month, so far). Again, some are the same people returning many times; some visitors don’t stay to read for very long; and many more visit than actually comment.

These figures are ridiculously small compared to the traffic some other kinds of blogs have, with thousands of hits a day. For poetry, however, it’s a high readership, and it comes from all over the world. I have readers in India, Africa, Argentina, China (to name just a few) and all over Europe, as well as thick concentrations in Australia, New Zealand, all the north American countries, and Britain. This exceeds my wildest pre-internet dreams.

But is it only that I can’t get published in reputable journals? Admittedly I don’t try very often, but when I do, I don’t have any trouble being accepted. (I do, however, prefer online journal publication too, these days.) In previous decades I was widely published in prestigious places; also the people who now comment favourably on my work include poets whose own work I love and admire. Yes, every poetaster can now get a blog and a host of enthusiastic readers to go with it; lovers of real poetry can still discriminate.

There are blogging poets with readerships and reputations far higher than mine. Some of them publish mostly in blogs nowadays; others use their blogs as adjuncts to their print publications. Some of us put our first drafts on our blogs and submit our revised work for publication in journals. Some go straight from blogs to chapbooks, and it seems that enough of their blog readers want to have the work in book form to make that worthwhile.

Somewhere in the mix is performance, for decades a good way of getting your work known and building up a following. It still is, and often the two things go together. Many of the blogging poets I know are also performers. I seldom do that any more, though I was a high-profile performer in the past. I moved to a small town where poetry performances are a few hours’ drive away in various directions. Although from time to time people have tried to get things going locally, so far they haven’t lasted. And I’m older now, and don’t much like driving for hours through the night for any reason. I rely more and more on the blogs.

However, you can surely do both, and submit to journals and publish books as well, and they will all enhance each other. Even I still do a little bit of performing, submit to journals occasionally, and am gradually creating some chapbooks. Blogging doesn’t have to be a substitute for other kinds of exposure, but along with performance it has become one of the first and easiest places to get your work ‘out there’.

It’s good from a reader’s point of view, too. I love being able to read the latest pieces by my favourite poets with just a couple of clicks.

NaPoWriMo

 

Or actually IntPoWriMo* as I'm not of the nation that has National Poetry Month in April.

Whatever you call it, I've decided I'm doing it. Other Aprils recently I've participated in the Poetic Asides Poem A Day challenge hosted by Robert Lee Brewer; and my first online experience of this kind, also repeated since, was the September month of poetry at Poewar, hosted by John Hewett. Both great fun and inspirational. Robert and John, in their respective months, offer prompts for participants.

NaPoWriMo is simpler, and perhaps more challenging — just write a poem a day.

They'll be on my Passionate Crone blog. See you there in April!

*(International Poetry Month) 

 

on this darkest of nights

By Thom Moon 10
(posted with permission)

i cannot see my hand in front of me

the bush outside my borrowed window is black and deep and dark

absolutely no perspective is gained around me

unless and until i look-UP!

fierce stars and planets in a foreign constellation

beam brightness and illumination

as it is by night-so too by day

your candescence shows me the way

among the rising,falling,spinning frozen stars

to navigate a pathway by the ways of Light

it is a long road to morning

the darkest hour is not before the dawning

it is now,when things seem blackest

we go within -or choose to look without

hope of consolation or maps

There will always be Light above us

and light within-even if obscured

by a context of darkness

Light and change are assured..

TRUST IN CONNECTION EVER/MORE August 19,2009

TURTLE ISLAND(a story forgotten..

By Thom Moon 10
(Posted with permission ... just because I like it.)

She had put the crab pots out and invoked turtle wisdom

(slow,deep,sustaining-with our whole world upon its shell)

Went out to pick up the crab pots

First one empty-second one full of crabs

Third one -something stuck inside

Now the water was clear so she could see down

at a turtle stuck for the past 12 hours

She had to cut him out-he was dead to our world

But she began massaging him ,flipper by flipper

until involuntary movements of his beaked head

assured her that some life was evident

She had done this for hours-praying,meditating,chanting

soothing and caressing until she was able to slip that turtle

back in to the waters(asking a surfboard rider to care for him

As soon as the board rider came close-turtle dived deep and was gone

leaving only this slip of a flipper of a story to share

as evidence that all magick is reversible

What you love is salvageable/beliefs make results real

and we still have a lot to learn from turtles

Like-how did such a huge creation

fit within the tiny entrance to a crab pot trap?

(and how will we ever get out again?

WELCOME TO TURTLE ISLAND TOTEM August 18,2009

Photo © Patricia Geyer 2009

Shrieking for Joy

I received an email recently from the (living) poet I most admire in all the world. (He's right up there with some of my favourite dead ones too.) He’d come across some of my writing online, including a mention of his first book, and wrote to thank me for the mention.

Given that poetry is my greatest, my lifelong passion, this was a very big deal. I opened my mouth and a shriek came out – which startled Andrew, reading the paper in the next room. I tottered in there dazedly to explain, but no words emerged except, “Oh! Oh! Oh!” in a series of shrieks that went on for about ten minutes. We’ve all read of “shrieking for joy”; I think this is the first time in my life I’ve actually experienced it. I doubt if I’d have been more thrilled had Johnny Depp walked in the door – an event which seems only a little more unlikely. “It’s as if God spoke to me,” I told Andrew.

Yes of course I wrote back. This man’s work has meant much to me over the years, in many ways. Poetry – good poetry – is one of my greatest joys. More, it sustains and uplifts my spirit in all circumstances. This particular poet is not the only one who has done that for me, but he’s one of those I return to often, always finding new depths. I was glad of the opportunity to tell him so.

Like all writers he was grateful for the feedback, and wrote again to say so. He also expressed interest in some of the topics both Andrew and I blog about, and I’ll be replying to him about that. It seems I have a new friendship beginning.

As I could guess from the poems, he turns out to be a nice bloke, not conceited, not being the “great poet” – though I think he is – but just human like the rest of us.

I told the story today to an old friend I was catching up with. “He’s been my hero,” I said, explaining what the experience meant to me. My friend is a witch and a feminist; it reminded her of meeting her own hero, the writer Starhawk, and seeing that this wonderful woman was also as human as everyone else. It showed her, she said, that she can be her own hero. I sit with that thought.

My new friend isn’t, of course, God – or only in the sense that each of us is. Still (I told you to watch this space) this is yet another experience that makes me feel astonishingly blessed.

Opportunities for Writers and Artists

Reposting just because I like these guys and what they're doing –

1)

THE SMOKING POET:
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS – FALL 2009

THE SMOKING POET publishes flash fiction; fiction; nonfiction; poetry; feature author; feature poet; book and cigar reviews. We publish work that ignites our imagination, inflames our passion, leaves us with a smoky aftertaste. The Smoking Poet also shares an extensive list of links and resources for writers and the cigar aficionado.

Submissions open year round. Send with category in subject line: poetry to Zinta Aistars; fiction/non-fiction and cigar reviews to J. Conrad Guest. Suggestions for "A Good Cause" to Lorena Audra Rutens, A Good Cause editor. For book reviews, please query first, attention to Skye Leslie, assistant editor.

For full submission guidelines and contact information, visit:
http://thesmokingpoet.net

Fall 2009 Issue Deadline: August 31, 2009

Please send your submission to thesmokingpoet@gmail.com. We look forward to reading your best work!

**************************************************************

2)

Please take a look at this new online literary arts magazine, GROUP 1.

You can see it at:

http://groupmag.blogspot.com/2009/06/group-1.html

If you like what you see, you might consider joining The Group, which produces it.

You can find The Group and join up at:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=90620106379

If you join The Group you’ll also be able to discuss the various stories, photographs and videos in the monthly editions on our Members page, and able to submit material for future editions. This would also entail you joining Facebook first.

If you don’t want to join Facebook and/or The Group, you also have the option of becoming a Follower of the magazine on our blogspot page.

Published in OCHO #24

I'm ever so delighted to have a poem in the OCHO Twitter Poets issue edited by Collin Kelley and Didi Menendez. You can see Collin's post about it here.

Yes, it's full of poets who post on Twitter, 38 of us. (My Twitter name is @SnakyPoet.)

People who read my blogs regularly may have seen my poem, "Hey, Crow", on my Passionate Crone poetry blog a little while ago - though if you missed it you can't read it there any more, only in the OCHO issue.

I'm in excellent company there; the whole issue is a very good read, and will also be available from Amazon soon.

The issuu site, where you can view it online or download it, looks very interesting altogether to writers and readers, btw. Detailed explanation at Wikipedia.

How Do You Tell If It's Poetry?

I guess any writer of free verse faces this question from time to time: "What makes this poetry and not just chopped-up prose?" After participating recently in the latest April Poem A Day Challenge at Poetic Asides, I was asked it again by a friend who read all my entries. The funny thing is that she herself is a poet (and a very good one too) who writes only in free verse. Maybe someone had asked her and she was hoping for a few clues how to answer.

If anyone else wants to express an opinion on this issue, please do!

Here is our email exchange:

Her:

Bin reading your poems. Hate to be an ignoramus, but what makes them poems, rather than journal entries broken up into shorter lines? Citing 'Andrew's 80th' and the one about the angel voice that came in this morning.
love, Me


Self:

Legitimate question. As I've said in one of them, I wonder myself at times about the plainness of the language. My Muse seems to want me to be particularly colloquial of late.

However, the answer to your question is, in most cases, form. "Andrew's 80th" was a double Anacreontic verse – and I know I said so, and even gave a link. It's a particularly suitable form for the subject matter, being traditionally used for festivities, everyday life, and love.

The others include acrostic, pantoum, sestina, shadorma.... Also I often create my own forms, sometimes with verse structure, often with syllabics, and quite often both at once. And I still sometimes use a loose metric pattern instead of syllabics. Today's "Farewell" uses caesura throughout, and linked verses (by carrying sentences over). There is also always attention to the sound when read aloud, which among other things dictates where and how lines end and begin.

That last applies also to free verse, and indeed needs even more attention there.

At this point, let me say I think it's more useful for this discussion to distinguish verse and prose rather than poetry and prose. "Poetry" can mean an innate, ineffable something, an essence hard to define (though it may be easy to recognise). It's the question of what makes something Art with a capital A. In that sense, prose can be poetry - and, alas, vice versa. So let's talk about why I think my pieces have a claim to be considered as verse, i.e. non-prose.

If there is a verse form I'm seeking to follow, that covers it. Even if I do it badly, it's still a pantoum for instance, if it follows the rules – it's just a bad pantoum. (Haiku is a different story, as many great haiku break the "rules", but we'll leave that aside. Some haikuists say it's not poetry anyway but a genre in itself.)

Free verse is trickier to defend. Again it lies in the crafting. Even a found poem is crafted to some degree. Although I like to think I can write quite well naturally, a journal entry is not crafted in that way, any more than this email is. The angel poem is free verse, as are some of the others.

There is always some sort of rhythm or pattern singing in my head – though, (ha!) as I am fairly unmusical, this could be suspect! Still, it's there, from the beginning. I know that prose can be highly crafted, and the best prose is supposed to have its own rhythms, and the boundaries can blur as in prose poems – even so, a thing will present to me as clearly one or t'other.

There is also crafting in the form of revising and tweaking after getting the first draft down. It is VERY important to say free verse aloud, just to make sure it is distinct from a chopped-up journal entry. It's important to weigh every word, every piece of punctuation, every line ending and beginning, every space, every verse break... That is important for all poetry, but ever so much more crucial in free verse.

You're not a spoken-word poet, so I wonder if you don't know to make a slight stop at the end of a line even if there is no punctuation there, and to give each piece of punctuation that is there its due weight (one beat for a comma, four for a full-stop, and so on). These things must be taken into account when reading prose aloud too (except of course for line endings – prose being that stuff where the lines go right to the end of the page regardless of what word happens to fall there). In poetry these considerations are even more vital, if that's possible. By those criteria, the angel one is definitely verse! (Also my grammar would be different for prose.) I actually thought I had succeeded in MAKING the reader read it in the way I intend – but of course that only works if they are going to observe the conventions of reading poetry, not if they ignore them.

I read an article a while back by an American poet (alas, forget who) on this very question. She was invited to a Book Club or something and the people there didn't know why her book was poetry – until she read it to them, and then they could hear it the right way. She said that the general public don't have the cues for reading free verse on the page, as they get in more formal verses, so they automatically read it as if it was prose. So for them, I guess, it becomes so.

And then ... there is also the fun of pushing boundaries, exploring how far you can take something before it turns into something else. I don't necessarily want to remain frozen within the accepted criteria. I'm interested that my Muse is directing me to be more and more plain and colloquial for the most part! At first I was disconcerted and uneasy, now I am rather liking the experiment.

Love to You!

Poetry Screeches to a Halt

Mine, that is.

A year ago, someone told me about '30 Poems in 30 Days' happening throughout September at PoeWar.com (Writer's Resource Center). I participated joyfully. I'm still grateful to John Hewitt, who started it all, for the poems I produced and the friends I made. That was the beginning of a most prolific year of writing, often in response to other online prompts I found – notably another Poem A Day challenge during the month of April, this time instigated by Robert Lee Brewer of Poetic Asides. My Haiku on Friday profile became popular, and I was recently asked to create something similar on LiveJournal: Friday Haiku, which I then handed over to someone else to host. One of my favourite games is x365, in which bloggers write about people who've made an impact on them, one a day for a year, in the same number of words as their age – so I, for instance am writing 68-word portraits. My one regret about all this poetic activity was that I had trouble keeping up with my favourite poets on MySpace, many of whom are prolific themselves.

Finally the wheel turned and we were back to September. John started another 30 Poems in 30 Days, which I began enthusiastically. The prompts were just as good, some people I met last time turned up again, interesting new people joined …. but by Day 6 I had run out of puff. On that day, in fact, I posted a poem that was a few months old instead of writing a new one, then made my farewells from the project. And I haven't written a poem since. Even my 68x365 blog has been languishing, though I do intend to resume and will have to do some catching up. The only things I've still been able to write are the haiku. (And some people say haiku aren't poems anyhow, but a genre of their own.)

I thought I must be experiencing burn-out. I don't say I'm not, but I realise there's another factor. I've observed that, for friends of mine who have more than one vocation, things tend to go in phases. I know people who are both artists and writers. They'll paint madly for three or four months, then suddenly that will stop and they'll find themselves scribbling furiously for the next six. My own dual vocations are quite different: poet and therapist. During this year of being consumed by poetry, the therapist has taken a back seat. But not any more.

At the weekend Andrew and I did a course in Thought Field Therapy. We've been acquainted with this modality for some years now. Our teacher, Carol, was one of the first people in Australia to learn it. Soon after she became a practitioner, she told us about this exciting thing she'd done, we tried it out and then couldn't stop recommending it to people. That was maybe eight years ago, and at some point she went to America and trained as a teacher. At first we didn't think of learning it ourselves. We already had a number of excellent modalities, and when TFT was indicated, for ourselves or others, we had Carol and other friends whom she trained.

Now we've all moved a little further away from Murwillumbah, in different directions, and one practitioner has more-or-less retired. Suddenly the training called to us, and so we did it – and loved it. I had fully expected to love Theta Healing, which we also learned quite recently, and indeed I do love it. I had not expected to fall in love with TFT in the same way, but to my delighted surprise I did. By the end of the weekend I realised: oh, that's why the poetry dried up – I'm in a healer phase now.

I don't expect the poetry will stop altogether, just as I didn't entirely stop giving people treatments during the writing phase; but the focus is different for the next while, however long that may turn out to be. I'm so excited, I can hardly wait to get into it! I'm getting new business cards printed; I'm creating brochures, and new signs for the market stall.

And aha! Now I can indulge in the pleasure of poetry by reading rather than writing it. All those lovely blogs to devour – whoopee!