Friday, April 22, 2005

A curse

I wrote a curse the other day and haven't been able to write a poem since. Neurotic, yes indeed. Bad bad Jude, to use words for something nasty.

My daughter and I are reading Inkheart. A lovely book, written by Cornelia Funke. The story is proceeding slowly, a signature of Funke's work, but it allows time for the reader to enjoy her beautiful imagery. My daughter and I always read together (me out loud, her listening) in the evenings. It was The Thief Lord last week, a rich delicious book set in Venice, same author.

Aside from Inkheart, I have just begun The Da Vinci Code - I've always found this kind of book fascinating. Codes, secrets. So far, it is a bit reminiscent of National Treaure (the movie) but we will see. The copy I have is big, hard cover, and illustrated with photos and paintings. Very cool.

News: Things are running smoothly over on The Writers Block. The new forum works well, and many of our favourite poets are back. My villanelle didn't make the shortlist on Guardian but some very nice poems did - if you like the form, it's worth a visit! And the Redactions website is back online, some data missing, but nothing serious!

Regarding publication - which is the real reason I started this blog! - I'm afraid I've been a bit lazy. Or something. I look at my poems and think about sending some out and suddenly feel overwhelmed. I'd really like to sort through and find 60 for the Three Candles Press book contest. I think it would be a nice way to have a first book published. But the task! I am still waiting for resonses from Kenyon Review (submitted Jan 18) and Redaction (submitted Feb 22 I think), and Comstock Review (submitted a long time ago). This month I'll have two pieces appear in online journals, per special request from the editors. Lise on Hiss Quarterly, and The Green Room on Poems Niederngasse

I've written a lot of poems over the past two months, largely due to the Poem Per Day forums. I do feel now it is time to revise, crit, and workshop the pieces.

"Revision is the poet's most difficult, demanding and dangerous work. Difficult because it's hard to let go of our original inspirations or ideas or our best lines, as we may have to do in the service of the poem. Demanding because it calls for us to reach deeper or further than we may want to, or feel we know how to. Dangerous because we feel we might, in the act of trying to make a good poem better, lose touch with the raw energy that drove the poem into its fullness to begin wtih and destroy what we have so joyously created." The Poet's Companion, Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux.

I want to thank all of you who have sent me notes about visiting this Blog. It is amazing to know that people read it now and then. I subscribed for a while to mybloglog.com and it was quite interesting.

It's spring here today, we spent the afternoon gardening up at my daughter's school. Warm warm and full of satisfaction.

peace to you
Jude

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