summing up

Recently I don’t manage to update the blog as often as I would like, although I do try to write at least one post a week. The problem is, of course, that I am doing many other things as well.

Perhaps this excuse would sound more believable if I did a round up of a few of my more recent writing achievements and activities. So, in no particular order:

The Apple Anthology published by Nine Arches Press was runner up in the anthology category of the Saboteur Awards. My contribution was a short prose piece – arguably a prose poem – adapted from the blogpost Harvest.

One of my poems was shortlisted in the competition to win a free place at Swanwick Writers’ Summer School. Frustratingly, its title seems to have been lost in the process: “Unsung Hero” was the theme of the competition. Any poetry competition entry should have a title rather than just using the theme and my piece was actually called The hands that made me.

My poem Faith, originally drafted in 2001, was the winner of the SWWJ Scholarship competition – a mixed genre competition – and I’ll be reading it at the summer tea following the AGM in July.

As SWWJ Poetry Coordinator, I wrote a page dedicated to the Society’s poetry activities for the 120th anniversary supplement which has just been published. We are holding a special celebratory service at St Bride’s Church, London, on October 14th, of which more later.

The Warwick Writing Programme MAW anthology Tinderbox is finally back from the printer’s and includes a piece called Cat Tales, which I think is the longest piece of creative prose I’ve had published to date. It’s a stand-alone piece adapted from a full-length manuscript I am working on. Today we are having a small local launch at the University at lunchtime, but we are planning an official London launch for the anthology in early September, so I will probably say more about that later, too.

I also had a hand in the production of Tinderbox – or, to judge from the acknowledgements page, perhaps that should be a foot:

And, finally, as part of the Coventry Book Festival, Coventry Writers will be reading at the Criterion Theatre in Earlsdon next Tuesday, June 24th, and I’ll be there, reading two of my poems. We had an extra meeting last week where Neil from the local Hospital Radio service came and recorded some of us talking and reading, so there’s a chance I might even be on the radio.

There’s a lot going on, then, which accounts for the less than regular blog updates. But at least some of what I’m doing is associated with writing, so I guess things could be worse.

still busy