We have woken, eaten porridge, drunk excessive tea, watched birds on the feeders and I have answered comments and made comments. I have seen peregrines in Australia, Battersea power station in London and the tops of several Lake District hills. I have also exchanged comments with a proper poet and expressed an intention to steal from his blog to write a haibun. It is two weeks before submissions end for this month and I have several options open to me.
There are three reasonable journals closing at the end of the month, or I could wait a couple of months, give myself time to mull it over, and submit to another one. April is a slow month for submissions and a bit of a lottery as that journal asks for just one poem and uses a guest editor. I don’t want to waste it. Decisions . . .
People generally say that you should write a poem and let it mature. It does help at times, I admit. But sometimes I have written a poem, decided it was ready, sent it and had it accepted within a very short span. This is not the norm, but i has happened. Some, as you know, have gone out three or four times before being accepted. Some never make it. I could fill a book with the poems that never made it into print, but it would be a dreadful read. My bad poems are just dull and fall far short of McGonigal’s epic awfulness.
The other factor pushing me towards using the idea and sending the poem is that once I get this idea on paper I can have another idea. They don’t come along with the regularity of buses, or sausages, but it does seem easier to have another idea once one is safely down on paper. I used to be terrible at his, saving ideas for the right moment, afraid that I might squander them on unworthy poems, and, eventually over-thinking and strangling them.
Anyway, can’t sit about chatting about poetry all day, I have to go and write some. I also have to make sandwiches for noon, as Julia needs to get off to the tea room.
11.17 – need a title, photos and tags then I can get some writing done and start making tomato sandwiches.
Porridge for breakfast then tomato sandwiches. You can see why my writing tends to be dull rather than Bacchanalian, can’t you?
Finally, a photograph that appeals to my fondness for history and rhubarb – old-fashioned terracotta rhubarb forcers.
All pictures from the RHS Gardens at Harlow Carr in March 2019.
11.35 – must get on with sandwiches. (I’m not slowing down, I merely diverted to reading a special off er on extra large shirts. It’s procrastination rather than writer’s block that holds me back.
