the london run

Every now and then I do a ‘London Run’. I visit the poetry library in the Royal Festival Hall, where there’s a display of poetry magazines recently received. I try and match my unpublished poems to some of those magazines, and send them in to see what happens. I usually have some success.

Last time I felt ill, and only got half the magazines scanned. This time, I felt ill again, although I managed to scan the other half. I think I’ll follow Oscar Wilde’s advice, for now, and assume coincidence.

One consequence is that I’ve returned to the poetry I was writing six months ago. I revised some poems, as one does, But I’m pretty impressed by what I was writing, though I say so myself. My last couple of poems have not been in the same compressed style. I’m going to have to go back to that style and explore it further.

Of course, editors may hate it. They’re perfectly entitled to be wrong.