When I sent off the manuscript to my chosen publisher, I wasn’t sure whether it would be accepted. I wasn’t unsure about the quality of what I’d submitted, but books can be rejected for a variety of reasons, beyond quality if the work/words.
It this new poetry collection was accepted, and the process of the publisher turning my poems and additional material into an actual poetry collection with a cover has begun!
Today that publisher, Gunninderra Press, sent me an image for possible use as the image for the front cover, and my next book is suddenly feeling even more real!
This next poetry collection is going to be my absolute best collection ever, and I feel I could never produce another one, and it wouldn’t matter, this poetry collection is perfection in poetic form! Or perhaps I’m kidding myself?
No, Stephen Matthews from Ginninderra Press likes it, and I trust his judgement, so this book-to-be is a good one! Isn’t as good as I feel it is at the moment? Only time will tell, but I’m happy with how this book looks and reads!
I’ve been working with Stephen a little bit about some of the non poetry bits and pieces of the book today (via email), and in the pit of my tummy, I can feel excitement is beginning to grow!
The actual putting together of the book is still not finished and so it usn’t printed yet, but there is an image for the front cover considered and approved of by me. So it is certainly looking like I will have an actual book to read from at the book launch, and copies to sell too, this is one of my favourite stages of this process, when I see my book being read by others!
The act of writing a poem can feel frustrating at times, trying to find a publisher can feel difficult if not impossible, and marketing, especially with a self-published book is horrid, but book launches are fun and joyous occasions!
So keep working on ‘LEONARD COHEN IS DEAD’ Stephen, so this new book will be ready to be launched at the end of May!
Blogging about poetry, interesting? I hope so! Now I’m wondering, could I write a poem about blogging, or even lots of poems about blogging, a whole collection’s worth?
Back to the subject of this blog post, regarding my next poetry collection. It’s underway, written, submitted, and has a back blurb written. Now it just needs to finish off the editing, get looked at by me for approval of the proof copy, and then it gets printed!
In case you’re interested, the title of this new collection is ‘Leonard Cohen Is Dead’, because that is the title of the first poem in the collection, and it’s an attention grabbing title, isn’t it? I wrote further about getting this collection to the ‘published’ stage here, which may be of interest to poets who have had a collection published, or would like to have one published.
My ideas about this are my own, and different people may get to that point in different ways. Some of the bits may be the same though, and it has worked well for me, on this occasion, and previously, in slightly different ways perhaps … But until you try it, you won’t know the best way you have for getting that collection published, yourself.
I haven’t always had my work published by actual publishers, but most recently, that is the way I’ve been going with my poetry recently, and it’s been ‘working for me’, as in, books get produced, and I get some money out of it all! The connections with readers are always the most important thing for me, though. I love sharing my words with people!
A Poem About Blogging? A poem or a blog post, that is the question – One a mere slice, a taste, or is it more? A poem can be so small, but so deep, an ocean’s worth of words, in a thimble of meaning, and truth …
A blog post, can be a brief piece too, but it may connect with hordes of readers, internet surfing, and include so much – research, images, links, comments from interested others
Which is best, is it a contest of words? Worth and value, trite words or true? Or is it simple fact, all words can win? This is the way I see it, for sure, all words are worthy to me!
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That little poem just cropped up yesterday, and I finished it today. I’m posting it here, on this blog post to show, perhaps what a poem can do, in few words, that would usually use many more words, in a blog post. And while I don’t consider this little poem to be my best work ever, I feel it does show the difference, between the two forms of writing.
And it was easier for me to express my point in that poem, that the truth is that I consider words, all of them, to be the best thing, in whatever form/genre they are presented. And if you are reading this piece, what to you think? Are you a word lover too? I won’t be surprised if you say yes!
And going back to the heading for this blog post, I am sure most of the poems in my next poetry collection, which is titled “Leonard Cohen Is Dead”, are far more worthy, and worked on, than the poem above this. But the poem up there has done what I wanted it to do, to give an example to further the point I wanted to make …
So that task is done, and so it is time for me to finish off, lest this short blog post out stay its welcome! Please leave a comment, if you have anything to say about blogging, or poetry, or words in general!
So I have the makings of a chapbook, with the title and front page image all organised, and that is a good thing, of course. It would be a good little book, with poems inspired by the recent trip to the Murray River at Mannum South Australia.
I took lots of notes on that trip, and gained many inspired thoughts, and yes, poems came of it. But as yet there are not enough poems to fill a chapbook, and even though there are still parts of those notes not squeezed out, to find their poetic essence as yet, I was wondering, will there be enough.
But today I went for a much shorter drive, to attend another event at St Kilda, that included water, and birds, and even though I didn’t take notes while there, I did some thinking, and now some couple of hours later, have one brand new poem. This poem includes some of the Black Swans I saw today, and the link of water and birds is there …
Then I remembered the partly written poetry collection I was working on last year, or possible the year before (that Covid year has mucked up my understanding of what the calendar says …) So that previous, unfinished collection is about some of my thoughts, inspired by our pond that i have spent time sitting near, since it came into my world. And I’m pretter sure there would be poems there about birds.
So, yes, aqua and avian connections are very much present in my world, and if I were to add all of those poems, plus a few more, that are sure to come, if i think further on the subject of ‘Words On The Water’, which was the name of the Murray River event, and will be the name of this new chap book I’m thinking hard about creating, well it all goes together, doesn’t it?
Even though the St Kilda, and pond-side poems, weren’t written whilst physically ‘on’ the water, they were definitely about water related things, or inspired by times spent near water, so could be said to be ‘on water’ …
So my idea of a little chapbook about the River Murray cruise/writing inspiration event Words On The Water, is shaping up to be about some of the Water in my life, pond, nearby coastal area, and the River Murray, a waterway that has relevance to my life, my mother being born, and living in Renmark, in her earliest years, a thing I think I’ve always known about. (and curiously, my father’s first name was Murray!)
I only got close to one bird today, and it kindly stayed still so I could talk to it, and snap a pic. So here is one of the Silver Gulls, otherwise know as a seagull, that I saw today, there were quite a few more around the place. This is one bird species that I certainly don’t expect to see anywhere near my place, or not until the sea level rises a fair bit more, in who knows how many years time …
Hello Silver Gull, lovely chatting to you at St Kilda today!
I saw other kinds of birds today at St Kilda, but only one kind of bird that I ever see at my home in Redbanks, and that was the ubiquitous little Willie Wagtails! I saw two quite young ones, down on the shore line, below me as I was stand and chatting with some people who’d come along for this interesting shorebirds day. I never would have thought about the Willie Wagtail as a shorebird before, but there you go, there were those two cheeky little creatures, right before my eyes. I wish I’d thought to snap a pic of them too, for proof!
I suspect a poem written about them will have to do … perhaps a task for a bit later on today, after I’ve finished my quite late lunch …
So this little book is heading toward a goodly number of poems, and who knows, it may be ready to be launched this year? If I self publish it, which is my intent, it can happen … I was at a book launch last night, the launch of Judy Gillett-Ferguson’s book “The German Teacher”, and was impressed by the idea of having a choir sing, as part of book launch event. Some of those singers are friends of mine, and I’m now thinking that surely every book launch should have a choir there, to sing a couple of relevant songs!
I spoke about this idea, with a couple of them, and they said they were always happy to perform, so from now on, I won’t have a book launch without factoring in a choir! There are lots of songs about both birds and water, so I’m sure the choir and I could come up with something great for the launch of my next chapbook, “Words On The Water”!
I’m a teensy bit excited about all of this! Do you get excited when you think about your new project? i think it’s important to have these things in our lives that get us at least a bit excited, from time to time! Do you agree? Tell us about what floats your excitement boat, what gives your inspiration wings!
I’ve written more about this idea on another platform I’ve just started writing on, Medium.com, the link is here, if you wish to read what I wrote there
I have a number of writing related things going on at the moment, with the two most recent ones taking up most of my time and interest, even though neither of them have deadlines …
That link will take you to an exploration of some of those projects, and the platform the link will take you too, is my most recent writing related project. Medium.com is the name of the platform, and it is one that a writing can earn money from, with only a slight effort.
Of course, if you put a bigger effort in, and manage to write something that lots of readers love, and share, you will make more money, as is the way of things in life, often. I suspect I will only make small amounts of money, but if I manage to have one thing that goes viral(ish), what a fine thing that would be!
At the moment, after a week on Medium I have only made a bit over a dollar, with 22 published articles. I have a draft piece that I need to finish and post, and actually wrote and published a new one today, on the subject of getting my metaphorical writing project ‘ducks’ a row.
But writing for Medium won’t get my Cosy Murder Mystery novel written, nor will it get my chapbook from the River Murray cruise I went on with other poets and writers, or anything else either. I have homework still to write for my writing group that will be meeting tomorrow too, and I don’t even know what that homework actually is!
Haha, it feels like my ducks are flying off, as they look over their shoulders and laugh at me!
Ah well, homework will get done, and I will make sure that homework piece relates to my novel, and that will be those two ducks covered, all in one piece of writing. It’s a good thing my living expenses are covered by my husbands pension, because if we relied on my income from my writing, we’d be in big trouble!
So my ducks are there, lining up at least a little, and that chap book I began on Saturday, will progress further today, or if not today, then tomorrow morning, and afternoon. I hope so, anyway! Come along, little duckies, line up and lets get moving!
My husband (Graham) and I have been playing Scrabble every day or so lately, and while we had almost finished the game in the photo, I had an idea. I often have ideas, some of them big ones, others not so big. Some fun things, some serious ones.
Anyway, I was looking at the various words on the Scrabble board, and thought about what an interesting mix of words we had there. That thought led to the almost inevitable idea of, why don’t I do something with that random mix of words, something fun, for me, and for my writing friends. My writing group and the radio station I’m involved with, have fun with five word challenges, to come up with a winning piece of writing, to win a bottle of wine (for the writing group) or to simply have your words read by someone involved with the PBA FM ‘Words Out Loud’ radio program.
Anyway, my idea is this –
Look at the Scrabble Board, and write something, using as many of these words as possible (perhaps aim at having at least twelve of the words in your piece of writing). Poetry or Prose, Sensible or Silly, Fact or Fiction, go for it! If you write something that leads to an award winning story, or film, please remember where the initial idea came from, and mention my name!
With the blank tiles, one of them is simple – it is a ‘u’ (aqua) and the other is not so simple, it is an ‘e’. You can use the words as they are on the board, or with ‘s’ or ‘ing’ added or removed if you wish , but perhaps no other changes that can’t have been actual words possibly scored for this game. There are a number of ways you may wish to go with this idea. Perhaps you might try writing a piece using only words that are on the board (a very, very short piece of flash fiction). Or you may wish to write something using words from the Scrabble board, but other words as needed, as well. Up to you, of course!
If you enjoy this little writing exercise, please let me know, and I may do it all again, after another game. Graham and I know lots of words, about many, many different things. Some of the words may have been new to one or other of us, and learning new words is always a good thing to come from a good and interesting game of Scrabble!
I’m not saying who won this game, but as far as I can see, on looking back at the scores we have, this game had the highest score for one of the two players, so far. Scrabble is a fun game, and really rewards players who are readers, and who have a wide range of subjects they read about.
I’m going to write a very short piece, using other words as well, and post it in the comments. You might wish to do the same, up to you.
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I ended up with a poem, not a story, but it’s very much a story poem, a narrative poem, scaled right back … I’ve put the poem in the comments section.
Carolyn Cordon - Creative 