MIB Blog

Quite heartened to find that the magazine is fully booked up until next Summer. I do tend to squeeze as many poems in as possible.  Recent submissions for the Summer issue have included some very fine poems  particularly a batch written by women which is a relief since the magazine tends to be biased towards men. I don’t know why the magazine doesn’t attract female writers especially since I advertised in Myslexia. So I’m hoping the word is being spread that the magazine is open to busi...

I’ve found over the years that lack of sleep is not conducive to writing: either wanting to or working effectively. So at the moment, I’m staring at pages wondering if I can have a nap at 4 am.  Similarly it puts the kybosh on ideas…my mind is currently a blank page …. I do think to negotiate poetry  both reading and  writing it,  ones  mind has to be absolutely at its sharpest as opposed to the blunt instrument  that  currently is the state of my poor brain.

There has been some recent debate sparked by an article on the prevalence of free verse over rhymed poetry. It was suggested that modern poets can’t rhyme and therefore are somehow lesser poets for it.

It’s something I do feel guilty about. I can’t rhyme. When I first started writing I instinctively went towards free verse. Now it is so entrenched I can’t think of writing in any other style. I find it hard enough trying to find the right words, remember to deploy ‘show doesn’t t...

I’m all reviewed out . After a while I just can’t think of anything  to say.  The final review I’m writing is a collection by Maria McCarthy in aid of Macmillan cancer research.  That it is in aid of  a charity in no way diminishes the work which is excellent. She is a local girl and it’s rather nice reading about local areas such as Conyer and Faversham. She writes the kind of poetry I love rooted in a the every day full of domestic references .  It’s the kind of writing that makes...

So I finally read in public. That is to say at the Canterbury Poet’s open mike I sat glued to my seat not looking up as I read my two short poems out.  I had rehearsed the day before and never having read my poems out loud I found them quite tricky to read... damn run on, lines and alliteration! Nevertheless I managed it with out fluffing my lines. I shall now build up to looking up and eventually standing up. Since they don’t have a rhyme scheme there is no way I can learn them off by he...

I recently read a poem by Edmund Spenser. Amid all the modern work I read, I had forgotten how good he was. The work focused on a deer. The language was exquisite and fresh, not a spare word and all woven into iambic pentameter. Reading work like this that is so well crafted, I feel totally inadequate and guiltily aware that working in free verse, tough as it is, is nothing compared to the craftsmanship of working within the constraints of  metre and rhyme. Indeed in Spenser’s hands it is n...

This time I didn’t disgrace myself by heckling. There were some accomplished readers and poems however I was struck by the almost universal tone many of the poets adopted. It was as if they switched to an official ‘reading out loud voice’, rather like actor becoming someone else. Now I haven’t been to many poetry readings but I’m guessing this is what you do.  I am gearing up to read but as opposed to this this idiom I fear I will only manage a poetic squeak. The answer I suppose si...

More poems are being submitted which is wonderful and in general they are of good quality so much so I am already up to summer of next year.

I think I may be a bit promiscuous excepting all poems that take my fancy. The magazine needs a tougher selection process. So from next Summer I shall place all the poems I like in a folder and than give then time to ‘prove ‘ so to speak. Nearer the time I shall sit down and decide which should make the cut. In this way I am hoping that the prestig...

In my efforts improve the profile of the magazine I now insist that poets mention us in future publications. I say this because I became aware that a young writer whose work I think I was the first to promote has gone onto better things and mentioned all the known magazines she has been published in but not Message.

I am not bitter as you can tell. It’s like the free cyclers who recently harvested all my lavender while I was out without so much as a ‘Thank you’. Still on a more positiv...