Sunday, June 12, 2011

a little update

I have been very naughty in not updating in this blog more often.

The news is that I have several poetry projects on the go.

I am generally not one for competitions but there is a competition for bush poetry that I have some suitable pieces for submission so am reviewing these prior to sending off.

My university research studies are looking at aspects of World War 1. One thing that keeps coming through time and time again is how much more an active pursuit that poetry was back then. I keep coming across poems written by soldiers and not just the noted war poets like Owen and Sassoon but ordinary men in the trenches. This has inspired a potential collection of my own. I have a journal where I record ideas, thoughts and images for potential poems. The ultimate objective is a collection of poems reflecting the WW1 experience. The image of a photograph of an Australian soldier laying dead in a German trench following the disaster of the Battle of Fromelles, simply will not go away. He literally looks as if he was curled up asleep but with one arm part raised as if reaching for something as he died. The notes for that potential piece keep growing and growing.

The other little item of poetic news is that I am currently editing my own first small collection of my poems - actually I am tossing in a couple of very short pieces of fiction to up the page count slightly. This is being done as a gift for someone but after the first 'edition' bound by a copy shop looked pretty crappy, I decided to go the whole Print On Demand (POD) route which means more editing and layout work to be done. A local artist has agreed to potentially collaborate a little with me on this project and we shall be meeting in the near future to discuss her possibly doing a drawing or two for the book.

Now, because my feet are cold and the second X-Files film is on, I am going to kick the heater into a higher gear and concentrate on agents Moulder and Scully for a while.

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