Relieved to be past the height of summer - always feel not quite myself in summer and the quiet space for writing poetry disappears in the busy summer months. 

I now feel, in the back-to-school lull, the autumn urge to write falling over me and I'm preparing for it by reading a poet who is new to me and I'm utterly bowled over by her poems - Mary Szyblist. Always a joy to come across a new poet whose poems feed and inspire. Not just her themes of nature, spirituality, female experience; but her hard, crisp imagery, her music, the bringing together of metaphysical and the sensual external world reminds me of Akhmatova.  

I find myself looking again for a large theme to work within and to write a series of poems around rather than going from writing opportune poem to poem. 

It's been lovely to have poems in two Scottish anthologies that have come out this summer: Summer Anywhere published by Dreich (a new and very dynamic press on the Scottish poetry publishing scene), a bumper anthology containing poems by around 200 poets. 

And Beyond the Swelkie edited by Jim Mackintosh & Paul S. Philippou, published by Tippermuir Books and is a collection of prose and poems to celebrate the centenary of the birth of George Mackay Brown.

Click on the links for more info on both books.

I've also had a few poetry acceptances (in the midst of several rejections!!), especially pleased to have some poems taken for Stand literary mag where I've never published before, they will appear in the magazine sometime next year.