A fairly
rudimentary post to update on some of my most recent, or forthcoming,
publications. Being a reader of other literary blogs (and being nosy), I like
to find out where people are being published. After a spate of rejections, the old
adage came true and I had six poems accepted in fairly quick succession.
My
collaboration with visual artist Mike Corcoran is perhaps the one I’m most
excited about. The Ofi Press featured
two of my poems – ‘Spelks’ and Ballast’ – alongside Mike’s paintings in their
December edition, which can be viewed online here. The project was really
interesting, and we’re hoping to do more with it in 2015.
Brittle Star, a magazine I’d heard a lot of good
things about, but admittedly had never actually read (I know, I’m terrible),
have also just published my poem ‘21.06.72’ in their newest issue; hard copies
are available here.
HARK, another excellent online journal who are
hatching plans to go into print in 2015, took two of my poems for their third edition. ‘Hintertuxer Gletscher’ and ‘Bootle Organ’ can be read here.
Finally, Under the Radar, the magazine offshoot of
Nine Arches Press, will be imminently publishing my ‘South Shields Snog’, which
pretty much does what it says on the tin.
For a bit
of a ‘beneath the bonnet’ glimpse, I should mention that using a basic
spreadsheet to chronicle the journeys of all of these poems has been incredibly
useful, so thanks to poet Will Stephenson for that. Seeing that a poem has been
rejected 3 or 4 times, but then ultimately finding its home in a journal, is
always reassuring, and reminds me of what Kim Moore has to say in her blog, 'Just One Poem', about the
agonising process of sending and re-sending poems out into the midst.
In 2015,
I hope to get into some of the ‘bigger’ journals. There is, of course, a
snobbish-ness to that sentiment: all of these ‘smaller’ journals are just as
credible, arguably more so, but there is a sense that – from my perspective at
least – I’d like to crack the Rialtos,
the Norths and the Poetry Londons of this world before
long. We’ll see what happens when I begin sending stuff out again in the new
year.
