Prize Winning Poetry
Yahoo – I’m doing the writer’s jig again and again and again.
I just received notification this morning that I have won first prize in a Literary Competition. It was for a suite of poems in sonnet form and was entered in the Traditional Rhyming Poetry section. The competition was conducted by Freexpression magazine here in Australia, though entries were received from a number of countries.
It was hard work – a labour of love I guess. But getting recognition like this is very encouraging, especially seeing some of the place getters are frequent competition winners.
And the cash prize is very nice.
Check out some of my poetry here.
Good writing.
April is Poem a Day Month
Over the years I have written about 500 poems – I haven’t done an accurate count. Most of these were written when the inspiration came to me, usually when I was particularly moved by a scene, an event or a special set of circumstances.
Over the last year I have written about 40 new poems, some of them quite long, the longest being about 140 lines. Almost all of these were written ‘on demand.’ I wrote them because they were expected of me as a part of my Master of Arts course. Most weeks I had to produce a poem in a set format as a part of the assessment process. It was tough going, but I managed it. I found the discipline of enforced writing actually worked in my favour: I had to produce something and that meant honing my skills as a poet.
With this in mind I endorse the idea behind April being the Poem a Day month (click here for details and rules). Each day a writing prompt by Robert Lee Brewer of Poetic Asides on the Writers’ Digest site will be given and poets are encouraged to write a poem a day for the entire month – or you may choose to only write one every few days. All poems submitted will appear on the blog site.
It’s a good challenge. Are you up to it?
Not sure where I’ll find the time. [sigh]
Good writing.
Write what you love
“You’ve got to love libraries. You’ve got to love books. You’ve got to love poetry. You’ve got to love everything about literature. Then, you can pick the one thing you love most and write about it.” Ray Bradbury
I love libraries – all those books on all those different topics, all those wonderful adventures to be enjoyed and pictures to be enjoyed. In fact, I love libraries so much that in another life I was a librarian for about eight years. I loved buying new books for the library – especially seeing it wasn’t my money buying the books!
I love books too. I have a huge collection of books. I can’t bear to get rid of any books. Throwing out a book is akin to loosing a child. Talking of children, I love visiting my adult children, especially my daughter, so that I can become reacquainted with a part of my library. To be fair, some of her books grace my library shelves – only on a temporary basis of course – until I’ve read them.
I always loved poetry too and I’ve written my fair share of poems, from the slightly ridiculous, to the positively banal and some that are absolutely brilliant (IMHO). This year my skills at writing poetry have had a great boost while doing my Master of Arts in Creative Writing course.
But back to the quote from Bradbury.
Writers must be readers. Read widely and voraciously. Love and cherish books. Get your hands on as many as you can; read, read, read, devouring books in numbers.
Then you can pick the one genre or form or discipline you love most, and then write what you love.
Good reading and writing.