Saturday 1 June 2013

More acceptances than rejections


Well, I haven’t been posting much poetry lately, but I have been busily employed in the world of literature, and poetry in particular.

Having completed April in a heap after writing a poem a day throughout the month, here I am at the end of another month. And I have completed just one poem in the last 31 days!

However, I have been busy editing and collating all the work I did through April, together with other material already completed over the last 11 months. Submissions of single poems, small selections and even a mini-collection have been sent off far and wide; and there are more yet to send.

I have been spurred on to press that ‘send’ button as much as possible because of one or two acceptances that have come through. There will be more news on those as they are published, but for now I am pleased to say that the number of acceptances are exceeding the number of rejections – so far! It’s a small start towards wider publication, but a definite start, and a very encouraging one.

I am involved in organising a couple of local projects that are taking up a lot of my free time right now. One is working on the committee of the PENfro Book Festival, which I joined earlier in the year.
Beautiful Rhosygilwen Mansion

This is held in mid-September in the fabulous location of Rhosygilwen in Pembrokeshire (links below) We have an evening of the spoken word -- poetry and prose -- with the Cellar Bards and Friends, a day of workshops for writers (I’ll be doing one on freelance journalism and ‘Selling Your Story’); a book fair and talks and meetings with writers in all kinds of genres. And there are some very special guests headlining on the Saturday night – I am currently working on the press release to make that big announcement.

The popular Book Fair, in the Oak Hall at Rhosygilwen
There is also an Open Poetry Competition – for anyone aged 16 or over, which is being judged by award winning poet Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch. Her wonderful collection ‘Banjo’ is shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year. I am running the admin for that competition, so I hope to be very busy around the closing date of July 19. It’s the first time PENfro has run a poetry competition. If it goes well we will do more in future years, so do enter – and please get your entries in soon!!!

There is also a short story writing competition for children, which closes on June 14. Link is below.

Oh, and I am one of the PENfro Poets – the workshop group based at Rhosygilwen that grew out of last year’s PENfro Festival. We will publish a small collection of our work later this summer. And, of course, some of us will be reading our poetry at the Cellar Bards and Friends evening at PENfro 2013.

So, busy times – and much more info to post up later.


More info/links:



Entry forms and info on the PENfro Open Poetry Competition, to download from the website: http://penfrobookfestival.info/?p=493

Children’s Short Story Competition:

PENfro page on Facebook:

The Cellar Bards Facebook group:


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