Year of Poetry Update - Week 22

I was a little more confident this week having taken the pressure off and allowed myself to play with language a bit rather than "write poetry".


I only fell 15 minutes short of last weeks hours which is a personal achievement considering the inclusion of two migraines in the challenges served up this week..
One thing that is playing on my mind is that I haven't produced anything worth submitting since I started regular teaching work.

Earlier in the year, while didn't feel every poem was going to go out, I was happy when completing most of them. No choice but to continue plugging away.

The Writing

I had to go shopping ( a 100km round trip) and this managed to spark off a short narrative poem that kept me engaged for an evening - it still sounds a bit twee for my liking though. I also tried an exercise out of Glyn Maxwell's On Poetry, involving the use of a deck of cards to frame stanza and content. It also worked surprisingly well.

The Study

This week's study was split between reading Chime, another chapter of Glyn Maxwell's On Poetry and The introduction to 101 Sonnets edited by Don Paterson. The Maxwell chapter focused on some of the melodic elements ie alliteration, assonance and was probably the least helpful of the chapters so far. The Introductory essay by Paterson I remember being quite good at the time, but I read it on the day I began getting the first migraine so things are sketchy.

Close Reading

My close reading included finishing off Dennis Greene's Wheat Field, and Jane Clarke's Every Life (from the collection mentioned here).

For the Statbadgers:

Total time: 07:43(277:39) hrs

poem writing = 4.20 (115:33) hrs
close reading = 1:42(57:12) hrs
technique/theory 1:19(70:01) hrs
reflection = 0:22 (22:31) hrs


Poetry written:


0 (21) poems completed
13 poems in draft
1 poem abandoned
1 poem facing execution at dawn



Poems Submitted:

0(13 in total) poems




Poems Published:


0(5) poem


Live Performances:


0(2)


Rejections:


0(7) poems