Swimming, Poetry and Radio 4's Off The Page

Having to book a slot for swimming has an effect on numbers. A group of people have to enter and exit together. Consequently the days of me swimming in a gloriously almost-empty pool are no more - at least until restrictions are lifted. I've just returned from a swim where I had to share a lane with a woman who had a particularly worthy style of front crawl. Each time we passed I expected to be knocked out cold by the power of her arm action. I may have to write a poem about it.

I am still plugging away with my poetry submissions. I am getting rejections but I keep having to remind myself that this is an expected part of the procedure. Right now I have twenty-one different poems out there. One thing is for sure, if I get an acceptance you will be among the first to hear about it!

Still on the subject of poetry, I was listening to an old episode of Off the Page the other night. The episode was called Poetry Shmoetry and it's from 2010 but is available as a BBC podcast for a limited time. I've tried adding a link to this screen shot so you can have a listen if you fancy. Hope it works...

At one point they were talking about whether poetry is a waste of time or not. As Andrew Motion was on the panel, and had only recently stepped down from the role of poet laureate, I expected it to be fully in favour of poetry but even he conceded that not only poetry but much of what is written down is not of particular value to us. They went on to consider whether most poetry is merely for tortured souls to fling their miseries far and wide - my words not theirs. 

This made me take a long hard look at my own work, including the above-mentioned twenty-one pieces. As I suspected, I do not fling miseries. In fact a lot of my writing leans heavily on the nostalgia of how things once were and how they are now and there's absolutely nothing wrong with a bit of nostalgia, now is there?