February 2017
I am a member of The Poetry Society and get regular copies of The Poetry Review, which are jam-packed with fabulous poetry, interviews and articles. I love a themed competition, so was delighted to see that The Poetry Society were offering 'Dilemma' for their poetry competition inspiration. I had just the poem in my stash - Duel - and have entered it. Winners will appear in Poetry News.
Update: My poem was not selected.
I have recently subscribed to Mslexia, a fabulous publication which encourages writing from women. Not a competition, but they have requested submissions of concrete (shape) poetry. It took me a while, but I managed to hone a poem called Ugly Butterfly (about moths) into a reasonable form and create a PDF document - which is the best format if you want it to 'hold its shape'.
A really exciting find for me this month was Tethered By Letters. It is a literary publication based in the U.S., but it is open to international submissions. It focuses on the dark, and the quirky - friction - which, if you've read my flash fiction, is just up my street. I had written a 750-worder called The Artist which was looking for a home. This is an unusual length for me, and for many publications, but just the length they specified.
I was on a bit of a submission-fest in February, and sent off six poems to The Rialto.
I was lucky enough to have a poem (Wind) published by The Caterpillar in their Winter edition recently. I actually sent off six poems for consideration, and assumed that only one had cut the mustard. However, I had a lovely email yesterday from Rebecca, one of the editors, asking if they could use another of my poems to publish in the forthcoming Spring edition. I was delighted. Here it is:
They also publish children's stories up to 1000 words, so I sent off one of those to Rebecca in my next email, called Minibeast Feast.
A fellow writer, Patsy Collins, asked if I would write a guest blog post about a reading I did at a residential home for the elderly recently. Here it is!
Another exciting find was Visual Verse. A photo prompt is posted and writers have an hour to write fiction or non-fiction between 50 and 500 words. My poem Little Feet was published.
And (possibly) finally, I am about to submit a ghost story to For Books Sake, which champions writing by women, just as soon as I hear back from them regarding the required submission format.
Update: my email wasn't replied to, so I did not submit.
As usual, that was not my final submission!
I entered a story called 'Round and Round the Garden' - which has some basis in truth - for the Exeter Short Story Prize. Results are out in July.
I also came across a FREE TO ENTER competition by The Candlestick Press. The theme was 'Clouds' , and inspired by their picture prompts, I wrote a poem called 'Cloud-Watching'.
And then... I found another FREE TO ENTER flash fiction competition by Reflex so I just had to go for it and wrote a piece called 'Prominence'.
And that is the end for February!!
