My current poetry wishlist:

New Collected Poems: W.S. Graham
Wolf Tongue: Poems 1975-2000 - Barry MacSweeney
The Divine Comedy
Public Dream - Frances Leviston
Nigh-no-place - Jen Hadfield
Tilt - Jean Sprackland
The Harbour Beyond the Movie - Luke Kennard
Camper Van Blues - Jane Holland
Postcards from the Hedge - Hugh McMillan
Elegies - Douglas Dunn
The Book of Blood - Vicki Feaver


Between my birthday in December and Christmas I hope to make a sizable dent into this list of desirables, as to where I'm going to put them...

First draft


The Man Who Gave Eyes to the Sea

The sea photographs

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To the delight of Plath and Hughes scholars and enthusiasts, a few days ago a large number of Hughes' papers were acquired by the British Library. Peter Steinberg, who runs the Sylvia Plath Info blog, has an excellent post here on why having access to these papers is not just a form of voyeurism, though no doubt it will be to some, but of real interest and value to academics and fans of the work of the greatest literary couple of the twentieth century.

Jane Holland, editor of Horizon Review , will be on the BBC Radio 4 programme 'Start the Week' this Monday at 9am where she will be talking about the literary webzine.

It's not been a good few days, I've been stuffed up with the cold though getting over it now, just suffering from earache which is hellish at night and, for the first time, I've genuinely lost my purse. Know anyone else daft enough to carry around in their purse a bankcard, credit card, husband's bankcard, council tax card and national insurance card? Though perhaps I needn't be so worried about the bankcards (I'm with HBOS).

Which brings me to the financial crisis, where does poetry fit into all this? I've a feeling my writing ought to reflect the zeitgeist of the age but I'm just not inspired to write about the world's impending financial collapse. Is this not what gives poetry a bad name - its apparent pointlessness. Certainly a lot of writers do respond to climatic events. I've been thinking about how I can respond, maybe it just has to be in a less direct way.

This is the first draft of the second poem that was hiding in the first draft of my last poem - did that make sense?!

Last Ferry

The pier lights glow like gas lamps

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Yippee! I've had my poem 'Mother Nature House Hunting' accepted for publication by the webzine Nthposition run by Canadian poet Todd Swift. It'll be in the February '09 issue. This is a great webzine, I'm really happy they've accepted one of my poems.

Other than this there's not much news, we're all loaded with the cold here. I'm currently reading Eleanor Rees' poetry collection Andraste's Hair. I knew after reading one of her poems on-line that I would love the collection. It a beautiful hardback from Salt Publishing and the poems are electric, I'll say more about it later.

Thanks for all your helpful comments, most pointed out that there seemed to be two poems in the first draft and it wasn't blending well.

Here's draft two, hope this is an improvement.

The Greenock Blitz

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First draft

The Greenock Hills

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