Monday 21 May 2007

poetry reading

Setting: an old gold fields pub, a rainy afternoon, latte and poetry readings.
Yes I went to my first poetry reading in years at Chewton yesterday afternoon with a group from my poetry critique circle. It was great to hear the featured poets and also to read two of my poems. I can't believe how nervous I was!

Give me a school audience and I'm not nervous, but adults...

Poetry read aloud is certainly different from poetry read silently from the page. Performance poetry, humorous or poems with a political agenda are more entertaining on a day such as this. And does one introduce the poem? I like to give a brief context, especially if one does not know the poet's work.
But I wonder for myself- have I run out of subject matter for my literary work?

Tuesday 8 May 2007

snippets, more of them

Looking back over my note books, which are just exercise books bought at any supermarket( cheap and portable and not too precious to write on and cross out) I am amazed at how much I wrote- snippets each day- the last five years have seen a drop in this notebook writing. I am writing more directly onto the computer. But after my recent laptop loss, is this such a great way for me to be composing?

So I want to recapture that fervour of writing every day without fail- writing more obviously leads to more work to send out and more work to mull over in a few years' time. To continue on from a beginining, to refine, to laugh about, to remember and to wonder.