Swings and Swirly Things

This has happened before, this poetical déjà vu thing, where one bit of submission news (either good or bad) is almost immediately followed by a further bit of submission news of the opposite hue (either bad or good). About ten minutes after finding out that Strix had passed over a poem, I receive another e-mail telling…

Andrew Motion

It’s 10 pm and I am just back from an evening at The Brewery Arts Centre where I have been listening to Andrew Motion read excerpts from Essex Clay, published this year by Faber & Faber. I walked into town and arrived half an hour early so that I could have a pint at the…

Caterpillar Poetry Prize 2018

Those lovely people at The Caterpillar Magazine announced the winner of this year’s Caterpillar Poetry Prize. Coral Rumble (great name) came first with a marvellous children’s poem called Mustafa’s Jumper, which you will be able to read in the summer issue of that excellent magazine (if you would like a sneaky peak, nip over to the…

… moving on

I’ve spent most of this half-term week checking through children’s writing in preparation for moderation, writing school reports and trying to recover from this back strain. It has been tricky because prolonged sitting aggravates the injury. Progress in the writing tasks has been sporadic and my body’s reaction to enforced posture constraint has been spasmodic….