National Poetry Day 2020: Vision

 

Today is National Poetry Day in the UK, and the theme for 2020 is 'Vision' or 'See It Like a Poet'. There are many wonderful resources and poems available on the National Poetry Day website, and a lot more out there generally on the internet (even more so than usual this year, of course...) 

Wandsworth Art has done a 'Wandsworth is poetry' feature to mark the occasion, and delightfully, I am included as a Battersea/Wandsworth poet, alongside excellent contemporary poets and the greats of the past such as Edward Thomas and Thomas Hardy. You can read it here: https://wandsworthart.com/wandsworth-is-poetry/ 

(Thank you so much to Hilaire, another poet who lives locally, for getting me on this list!) 

Black Bough Poetry's 'Deep Time Volume 1' issue, published in print during the summer, is now also online and includes my poem 'Open Ocean'. You can download it here. Buying the print issue is also highly recommended, particularly as the artwork is beautiful and more so in print. You can buy it here in the UK and also on Amazon in other countries. 

Muse Pie Press, who have published several of my short poems over the years in Shot Glass Journal, recently crowd-sourced a 'pandemic poem' from writers who they have previously published. We were asked to contribute a line responding to our feelings about the COVID-19 pandemic, which could then be woven into a long poem. You can now read the ambitious and startling result here. I could ask you to guess my line, but rather than do that, I'll tell you that it's 'Waking to light's anxiety - the distance of all things'. 

Nomination for the 2016 Pushcart Prize

It was great to hear recently from Muse-Pie Press that they had nominated my poem 'Wicklow Mountains After Rain' (which appeared in their short-poem publication Shot Glass Journal) for a 2016 Pushcart Prize.

This follows their nomination, last year, of one of my poems for the 2015 Pushcart Prize. I'm very flattered, and obviously it's once again motivation to get working...

Nomination for the 2015 Pushcart Prize!

To my great surprise and delight, I learned this weekend that Muse-Pie Press has nominated my poem 'Battersea Park, December' for a Pushcart Prize. The poem appeared earlier this year in Shot Glass Journal.

I will save the champagne until I actually win something, but in any case this is a very nice vote of confidence, and further inspiration to get writing and send out some more poems.

"How do poems grow? They grow out of your life"

I've had a couple of poems published in the latest issue of Shot Glass Journal, an American journal produced by Muse Pie Press and specialising in short-form poetry. (They also published me last year.) You can find my poems on this link: http://www.musepiepress.com/shotglass/issue9/clarissa_aykroyd1.html

'Krakow' was written about four and a half years ago, after my visit to the city, and 'Battersea Park, December' is only a couple of months old. The photograph above was partial inspiration.

I think the two poems work quite well as a pair, as they are both poems about place and displacement, in different ways.

The quotation "How do poems grow? They grow out of your life" is from American poet Robert Penn Warren.

In Which Your Humble Author Has Two Poems Published

I've just had two poems published by Shot Glass Journal, which can be found on this link: http://www.musepiepress.com/shotglass/issue7/clarissa_aykroyd1.html.

Shot Glass Journal is dedicated to short poetry of sixteen lines or less, which fits well with the form of many of my poems. It is published by Muse Pie Press.

These are both poems of place, written under rather different circumstances. 'Andalucia' was written about six months ago on a holiday to the south of Spain, where I spent two weeks based in Jerez de la Frontera and also visited Seville, Cadiz, Arcos de la Frontera, and other towns. It's a simple poem, a film-reel of images made up of heat and light and music.

'Temple' is a more complex poem, and as I wrote it close to five years ago I'm no longer entirely sure about its genesis. At least, it is about the Temple area in the City of London, a historic enclave of barristers and other legal practicioners. During a brief stint working nearby, I went there frequently and always felt as though I was stepping back in time. It was a true haven for me and is still one of my favourite locations in London, if not my favourite. I think, though, that I was uncertain about my place in London at the time, perhaps even wondering if I should consider moving away. The poem carries at least a hint of the feelings I tend to have at these moments of uncertainty. Several years on I would say at least that I feel like a part of London - not just watching.