Fran McMahon: A Year in Poetry

So long, farewell….

franmcmahon — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 21:59:18 +0000

I have now finished this blog – a diary of my poetic (and not so poetic) life in 2010. A huge thank you to everyone who read the blog and left comments.

This year I will be trying to sift through my work and bring together the bones of a first collection…and deciding if I dare enter the MAG Poetry Prize again – winning for a third year would be too strange to imagine!

Happy Christmas

franmcmahon — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 11:30:41 +0000

I would like to wish all my readers a very happy Christmas and a prosperous and poetic New Year! Keep warm.

Competitions

franmcmahon — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 22:26:39 +0000

Poetry Kit has a huge list of poetry competitions ranked in order of deadline (currently 12 December 2010 to 12 July 2011). If you fancy a challenge for the New Year just pick a competition. If you hear of a competition and think it sounds too good to be true, check out their section on Poetry Scams (yes, even in the lovely world of poetry there are people eager to make money out of the vulnerable). Finally, if you want to know what to buy a poet for Christmas the answer is… a notebook (a big thick one with an interesting cover).

So much information so very little time (that could be the first part of a Cinquain, if I could think of an ending).

Advent

franmcmahon — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 22:13:01 +0000

Had an idea for a poetry advent calendar; 25 windows and a short Christmas poem behind each one. Of course you would need to add lots of chocolate – and a popular cartoon character – to have any chance of a sale.

Just like Wendy Cope…

franmcmahon — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 21:53:50 +0000

I find myself unable to write to order. Someone asked me to write a poem for a work event next week and I thought about it for five minutes and then chickened out. My mind went blank and I could only think in cheesy rhyming couplets – one up from the usual limericks. Luckily (unlike Wendy Cope) I don’t get asked that often.

Stebbing

franmcmahon — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 22:11:24 +0000

I will be appearing - along with fellow Essex Poetry Society members – at the Stebbing Ladies Group on Wednesday night. We are entertaining the group with a selection of our own poems. I have been going through my back catalogue and was surprised to find that most of my poetry is depressing stuff – war, death, passage of time, death, age, memory loss, death. The Stebbing Ladies are celebrating Christmas so I have tried to find a few brighter pieces to read, but next year I must make an effort to write some humourous stuff (witty rather than limericks) or at least something that doesn’t make people want cry into their Christmas pudding.

Black Books

franmcmahon — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 22:33:54 +0000

Everyone says that you must keep a notebook. This is for jotting down ideas, odd rhymes, snippets of stuff you hear on the tube, newspaper cuttings – in short anything and everything that might be turned into a poem at some point.

I have been writing poetry for almost two years and now have two big fat notebooks stuffed with lists and half-finished stanzas and a sestina that won’t work out no matter what I try. Rereading these at intervals not only provides inspiration, but a sense of progress. However, there is one page that troubles me. Squashed into the bottom right hand corner is a jumble of words written in green ink: pith, peony, pot, polite, permanent, pushy. I have no idea what I was thinking nor how this list could be turned into any sort of poetry. Perhaps I could start a competition…

Workshops

franmcmahon — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 22:26:25 +0000

I used to think that if you thought about it for long enough new poems (or at least ideas for them) would arrive. Now I have been writing for a bit I see that thought power often needs some encouragement, and that is where the workshop comes in. Of course not everybody responds well to these things; the very word makes me think of dusty church halls, sitting in a circle, listening to a perfectly decent poem being savaged by an unhappy soul. And that is where The Guardian comes in.

Every month the paper runs a poetry workshop. A poet – and it is a different one each time - writes about an aspect of poetry then sets an exercise. You can send in your finished poem and, if the poet likes it, it will be published in the paper along with an appraisal. Or you could just do it at home. For fun.

Essex Poetry Society

franmcmahon — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 21:28:56 +0000

We had our AGM yesterday. We are trying to put together a programme of events for 2011. If anyone would like to come and speak to us for roughly 45 minutes on a poetry related topic, please get in touch. We meet in Stebbing in Essex on the last Sunday of every month. We can’t pay much, but we do offer a cup of tea/coffee and a good choice of cakes.

SOUTH 42

franmcmahon — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 21:42:09 +0000

Went to the launch of SOUTH 42 last night. I would like to say that I had a nice time, because SOUTH is such a lovely magazine. However, the launch was in Southampton. It took me over 4 hours to drive there (only 2 to get back) and I arrived with minutes to spare. I was then third on, after the two selectors, and hadn’t really gathered my thoughts after spending the previous half an hour lost to the point of tearfulness on the city’s ring road. The evening improved when I heard some good poetry – lots of funny slightly self-deprecating stuff. I must submit something for SOUTH 43 (deadline 30 November) and hope, if I am invited to the launch, that it is somewhere close to my house.