I've been asked to read out a poem next Wednesday following a prize giving for a poetry prize I didn't win, so it was good of them to let me read out, though I'm terrified at the thought of reading in front of people, I get stage fright easily, but I think I've gained some confidence in my writing recently. The main problem, other than panic (which I haven't been doing) is deciding what to read. Most of my poems aren't really good enough to be read aloud, though some of my new ones are, yet I don't really trust those news ones as much as I trust the older ones, which I grow tired of. I got it down to Three Men With Suitcases, Explosion #1 and #2, and Modern Life, the latter a much older one. Though today I've decided I could do Streets in Liverpool (title to be changed) and I'm in the middle of editing it so it's much more audible. I shall post the final edit.
What I find annoying going through my poems like this is that I'm looking through the ones I thought were my best and I'm thinking "Hmm, no, that's not good enough," and so I know I need to write a lot of new poetry and stop relying on a bunch of old ones I wrote one or two years ago.
I was told by my tutor, after having trouble defining myself to a genre, to start a magazine. I'm going to get my friends involved and first have an online magazine and gain content without really any set issue, then I'll do a print version and publish content received. The problem is, I don't really know how to go about doing it.
1 comment:
Interesting idea Mike, the magazine. I too have been going over my poems from the beginning and then it starts, the "what was I thinking?", "Is this really good?", " I really need to write better". Then I get bummed that I haven't advanced in my writing ability. But you know the feeling is temporary and I write again and I take what I have written up to this point and use it as a means to empower myself, at least I wrote what I wanted to, no matter what.
So good luck with going through your work and best of luck reading in front of everyone. You can do it!
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