Long overdue update

[Midnight sun in Advent Bay, Spitzbergen, Norway] (LOC)for the bots that are mostly my audience and those rare commenters that have graced these pages.

The poem Dead Messengers, mentioned in the previous post has been selected for publication in an upcoming print anthology, to be released next year.  So I am a little chuffed at that.

On the poetry front, it’s been slow; other activities ie podcasting, post-production and work seem to be taking their toll. I missed attending talks by Mark Tredinnick at SA Writers Centre and performing at some poetry slams due to continued car problems.

The recent news about Graham Nunn has me feeling a  bit adrift and wondering which direction to take(has me questioning the value of workshops, mentoring etc).  I have a really supportive online group of writers and friends but aside from reading poetry and books on writing it, I am feeling it a struggle to search out the mentoring or workshops that I think might benefit me.

Overland has a deal with a subscription and a reduced fee to enter their rather generous poetry prize and I am also weighing up whether it’s worth joining Australian Poetry.

I wrote the poem below before news of the publication but much of it still holds true.  I expect though that this is a fear that everyone has.  I should probably be less morose and give myself a kick up the arse.

 

Too Scared to Dive

a wordsmith
I was once kindly labelled
and vain
I took it as a source of private pride
until
I swam from sheltered pool
into the unprotected swell
of an ocean
full of poetry.

schools
of loud and angry activists
of new formalists, imagists and
symbolists
and every once in awhile
the whale-song
of literary
leviathans.

tossed
by currents
and movements
drowning
as I splash about in panic
reaching for different lifelines
the solidity and stricture of form
then the freedom
of liberated verse.

caught
not wanting to strike
for shore
and too scared
to dive.

 

Audio file here

 

First self-published at the Poetry Zoo website.

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