Year of Poetry Update - 6 Months

Arrived this week.

This week The Triggering Town arrived and supplied some much needed study material. I mentioned in the last post that I had already read the title essay i.e. The Triggering Town and that having it and the surrounding essays only makes that essay much more interesting and relevant.

This week saw my writing days impacted on by volunteer work at the local maritime art exhibition and fishing competition.  My other half was presenting some of her watercolour and garden art and managed to sell a significant amount and pick up some commissions.

I was noticeably chomping at the bit to get to the writing desk though. In the end I just had to fit the writing in where I could

The Writing

I only managed 1 hour each day on the weekend but those days turned out to be quite productive.  I managed to finish off one of the poems written last week and submit it to make the cut-off for a paying publication. It was one of those situations where you don't know if you should hold onto it and rework it or throw caution to the wind.  In the end I threw caution and ended up getting an acceptance that afternoon.  It all happened so quickly that I almost didn't have time to get excited.

With other activities impinging on my writing time I decided to do some more revision on the second poem written in last week's flurry of activity and again threw caution to the wind and submited this poem to a new market.

And I thought that would be the end of my writing chances this week but Thursday ended up being more productive than either Sunday or Monday, and I finished the week with a solid draft poem on the Orlando massacre and Alan Turing.

The Study

I really enjoyed getting stuck into The Triggering Town and managed to read and note up to Chapter Three.  Hugo is witty and conversational in his approach and I can see myself adapting some of his ideas readily into my process.  The reading is less about the technical approach to writing although there has been a smattering of that so far, and more so about generating the right state to write from.

Close Reading

This week I read Fiona Wright's Almost Aubade, Melbourne which you can read at Meanjin here.

6 Month Review

Back in December of last year I wrote this post in preparation for the Year of Poetry and this snippet below was what I decided my goals were:

I want to exceed publication credits for this year so that's 4 + published poems.  I want to write at least 12 poems of publishable quality.  I want to increase my own poetic understanding through reading technical material and through reading of other's good poetry.

So how am I going?

Well 

1. 6 poems accepted for publication so far ( Tick)
2. 23 Poems written and I think that at least half of those are of publishable quality (Tick)
3. This part is hard to quantify, but I do feel that I am learning technically and emotionally and last week I felt the beginnings of a state of flow, that point where either in reading or writing poems that the mechanics seem to disappear and there's a present awareness of what you are or someone else is doing (so : Tick) 

I may need to come up with some stretch goals to keep me going but I think that this process has been a success. 

For the Statbadgers:

Total time: 07:56(294:05) hrs

poem writing = 4.40 (125:43) hrs

close reading = 1:37(60:19) hrs

technique/theory 1:11(72:00) hrs

reflection = 0:28 (23:44) hrs

Poetry written:

1 (23) poems completed

13 poems in draft

1 poem abandoned

1 poem facing execution at dawn

Poems Submitted:

2(15 in total) poems

Poems Published:

1(6) poem

Live Performances:

0(2)

Rejections:

0(7) poems