Weeks 56 and 57 – A non-award-winning poem and a technology failure

Week 56 found me disheartened as a writer. Rejections feel personal and when you’ve entered a competition and don’t place, it can feel even worse. But a poetry competition is as much about the preferences of the judge, the feeling they get from the poem, as the validity of the piece – and as a poet I have to stand by my work. I love this poem; by posting it here I will never send it to another competition or off for magazine publication, but you know what – I can live with that. I’d rather people could see it and – hopefully – enjoy it than it sit in a file on my computer for ever more, rejected and sad.

I guess the point is to say love your work, and do it for love, and if other people don’t enjoy it that’s a shame but it’s not the end of the world!  If you want to see the winners, they are here and you will see they are of very different styles to mine!

Afternoon Seaside

A bright warm sun sits on my shoulder,
Parrot-style. It draws my image, elongated
Across a sticky path of dripped ice-cream.

The sea is the colour of Paraiba apatites:
A subtle, shining sheet of gems
Twinkling provocatively in the light.

But the pebbled shore is dry, and dead –
Solar hands bleached its seaweed offering,
As omnipresent seagulls ate shelled day-trippers.

And the wind that wraps me in my hair
Carries a gentle scent – the aromatic
Portent of another change to come:

Clouds form a fence between the heavens
And the earth, as the ever-nearing horizon
Fills with tomorrow’s stormy weather.

So we ignore the imperfections, and the
Cooling evening sun: tomorrow’s end of summer
Makes us glad, today, we’ve come.

So on to my holiday.  I realised very early on how much technology is a part of my life, as on my way my mobile completely failed.  I had no internet there and the dongle I took didn’t work, and then my computer started playing up – but I wonder when it became normal to have all these things on holiday?  This wasn’t a researching trip like last year, so why did I feel the need to look at the internet at all?  I took my computer because I needed to complete a submission (which I did, but am not overly happy with), but why did I feel so lost without a phone?  It’s a good reminder how things have changed over a very short time: I still remember getting my first mobile phone 12 years ago, now people go on Facebook when they’re on a beach on holiday!

Other than that, and the completion of my short story, I wrote a fair few notes but spent most of my time actually being present and engaging with the experiences.  I have returned home with loads of ideas as well as some early format poems so I’m really looking forward to getting my teeth into some new pieces.  Although, as you know, I’m not exactly a skilled photographer I am hoping that the images I recorded will be a reminder of the feelings that each place and scene evoked.   I will keep you updated on progress…

I’ve also started planning for October’s projects so I hope to give you a bit of a heads-up about that next week.

Until then – happy writing from a very well rested me!

EJ

🙂

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