critique – Page 2 – don't confuse the narrator

before breakfast

View across a lake with Queen Ann's lace in foreground

I went for an early walk today. Like the lake, the day had an umbelliferous edging. It also had moon daisies, above and below.

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pussyfooting

Over the years, I’ve given a lot of feedback on a lot of manuscripts, both poetry and prose. I’ve also been grateful to receive commentary on my own writing.

It’s never very nice to be told that your work has failed, that your scansion is all to pot and that your grammar and spelling need major revisions. But how are we to improve if no one points out the weaknesses in our work that we are too blind to see for ourselves?
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from the archives

Over the years, I’ve done a lot of poetry workshopping online; I’ve learned a lot from the experience and have crossed paths with all sorts of people. One young poet whose work I pulled apart fairly ruthlessly around a dozen years ago has just won the Forward Prize for poetry. (There were plenty of other people who took an interest in his work, so I claim no special credit.)
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blowing my own trumpet

Close up of band statue, l'Escala, Spain

This week I received a surprisingly enthusiastic reaction to some poems I had submitted for feedback; I also received some delightful comments on my blog from random robots.

I leave it to the reader to guess which is which:
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critical moments

For reasons that I won’t go into here, I have just spent the last two days writing a formal “critical review”. I can’t say I enjoyed the experience and I was delighted to take the opportunity to sneak out to watch a firework display last night. As the local secondhand book shop was having a late night opening, I decided to pop in on the way home and delay my return to my desk even longer.
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