Tag: december

Uncategorized

A Piece of Good News

In response to an open call, I sent a couple of poems to Speculative Books in Glasgow at the end of December. I then forgot I’d done this until I received an email to say one of them had been selected for an upcoming anthology.

I don’t submit work to publishers nearly as often as I once did. These days, I’m more focussed on organising writing groups and other projects. In fact, the submitted piece was written for my monthly poetry circle and probably wouldn’t have existed otherwise.

I’ll be receiving two contributor’s copies in due course, ahead of its official launch in September, which I will no doubt publicise again nearer the time.

Uncategorized

No Fun ‘Til February

I really like January. It carries none of the bustle and hassle of December, but instead has a fresh feeling, as though the cellophane has just been removed from the new year.

There is a trade-off here, though. The relative stillness of the month means that nothing particularly literary is happening right now. We need to wait until March for both the St Andrews poetry festival – or StAnza – and the Scottish Poetry Slam Championship in Glasgow. Many other literary fairs and gatherings don’t happen until summer. Even the Scottish Book Trust has given participants until the end of this month to enter their December 50-word story competition.

Outside of the literary scene, I would normally take part in Fun a Day Dundee. This is aimed at artists rather than writers, but it’s to help them through the slump of January. I usually find a way to incorporate text. However, that event isn’t running in its usual form this year, although hopes are high for 2025.

The best I can do at the moment is to complete the books I borrowed for the readathon a couple of weeks ago and return them to the library.