CONTOUR Issue 2 OPEN SUBMISSIONS

WRITING OPPORTUNITY:

Contour WPL is open to submissions for Issue 2.
Please read guidelines carefully.

I look forward to your poems.

Poet Laureate

Do you want something to do over Christmas? Want to write in the New Year? Submit your work via email for the next issue.

Following the success of Issue 1 submissions are now open for Contour once again. 

The theme is LOVE – but do not be put off by this, I am searching for more than love poetry. Here are some ideas. 

Love of each other – Romantic love 

Unconditional love is, in essence, true love. Unconditional love is caring about the happiness of another person without any thought for what we might get for ourselves.

Bibliophilia

Love of place – Topophilia is a strong sense of place, which often becomes mixed with the sense of cultural identity among certain people and a love of certain aspects of such a place.

Love of Nature – one of the better known theories, the biophilia hypothesis, suggests that we love nature…

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End of Month Writing Deadlines & A Surprise!

I am hoping this evening that I will be able to write a poem for submission, I missed the opportunity to enter Furies Anthology Competition last night, as I just couldn’t manage to write a poem that I was happy enough to enter.

After I have made my final deadline, I need to get over to Camp NaNoWriMo and NaPoWriMo to prepare for tomorrow – the 1st day of both challenges.

I am still catching up with 52 poems and need to sort a few email / admin activities. I would also like to write some blogposts.

I came home to a lovely surprise this evening. I had work and after that had to travel back to my flat to collect a month’s worth of post, check the apartment over, collect my poetry from the library (it had been on display) for the Arts Network, go to the bank (cash a cheque from a school sent over a month ago) and get to the I thought ‘Oh, no! Not more!’ But when I turned it over, I found a lovely hand written note. It was some Stanza poems and a poetry magazine from Claire Walker. The only thing about being so busy is missing time connecting with friends. I was sad that I hadn’t been in to offer a drink in exchange for this poetry parcel.

I hope to spend some time catching up in a fortnight – our Easter break, I know that I will need some time for R & R though and family time. I don’t want to be so busy that I am backed up with things to do. I need some free time.

It was a great surprise though! Thanks Claire!

 

Diary Out, Inking a To Do List

We got to the weekend! Hurray! I have been so busy recently that I am looking forward to some time out next week. I still have to work as I haven’t won the lottery, but am taking a back seat on poetry events, there are some on but I won’t be involved.

Today I am writing my To Do list, there are several deadlines over the next few days that I need to write against. I wrote a poem for Stanza yesterday after work, it took 1.5 hours and I need to go back to the drawing board with it, unfortunately it is not for any of my deadline submissions. Writing close to the bone again, when will I learn?
I am not one of those naturally organised people and so I am doing my best with my writing diary and post-its, (I find it better than last year’s excel spreadsheet format).

I missed a great opportunity because I thought the deadline was today and it was yesterday at 5pm! (I was asleep!)
The brief was London based and most of my London poetry wouldn’t have been suitable, so it would have meant new writing being born, tough call in 2 hours. It was an opportunity to have it displayed outside for a month (April) on huge boards, 8 poets were to be selected.
Looking for more opportunities like this in the future.

Today Mr G and I are finally (after a month of promising) going to sort the allotment jungle – it will be hard work, we are thinking of letting it go now we have a garden, complete with veg patches he dug last weekend.
Then later we are off out to the Theatre, a Christmas Gift from him to me/us.

In between I hope to get some writing done, maybe tonight when we get home.
My priority is 3 poems on a deadline for tomorrow, a video script and some poems about hotels in case I make it to the 3rd day of the Cheltenham Poetry Festival.

I am also currently working on a collaboration for Mouth & Music (8th April), which is exciting, just hope 1 more rehearsal gives us enough time, I cancelled next week’s rehearsal to work!

Finally Email Access and News on Publications

I am FINALLY back in my email account, after getting locked out on Tuesday! By the amount of postmaster failure messages I presume my account was hacked. I certainly haven’t sent any from that hotmail account since Monday. I had lots of emails and over 200 to sift through in the junk mail. In amongst all my emails I found two waiting for me that I was really excited to open!

I had 2 emails from recent submissions. One I made in February and the other sent earlier on in March.

Bitter sweet really, the periodical didn’t want to use the poems at this time, although they’ve encouraged continual submission, the others (From Feb.) were accepted for publication in a book, yeh!

First success of this year so far, hopefully the first of many!