Tag: poetry

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A Weekend of Minimal Writing

In an entry from 28 January this year, I spoke about visiting the Millennium Bridges in mainland Great Britain, making fleeting mention of a further visit to Land’s End.

The original plan was to pair that with a visit to John O’Groats a couple of days later. My train ticket would allow me to visit both places, but the storms did not, so I delayed my visit to Saturday just gone. My hotel booking couldn’t be cancelled without losing the payment; it could only be rescheduled.

From the January trip, I’d learnt a lot about the logistics of taking long-distance public transport and the luggage required for such a journey. It was almost perfect, but I forgot the charger for my laptop. With eight hours of total journey time between Dundee and Thurso, one of the nearest towns to John O’Groats, that would have been handy.

Yet it didn’t matter too much in the end. I had plenty of battery for the activities I absolutely needed to complete, plus Scotrail didn’t have many three-pin power sockets on this journey.

The trains did all boast USB type A sockets, but they didn’t appear to be at full voltage. This led to the discovery that my phone has an extreme battery-saving mode, so I could at least charge up faster than the power was consumed. If a story idea did occur, I always had a pencil and paper with me.

Once I’d reached John O’Groats, I found I didn’t particularly want to write, other than posting a card from the northernmost Post Office in the UK. I just wanted to wander about for a couple of hours, maybe take a couple of pictures for people back home. Unlike the Millennium Bridges, there was never a plan to chronicle this journey in detail.

I did, however, ensure I stood beside the signpost at each end.

Gavin Cameron in a thick jacket, standing beside the signpost at John O'Groats.
Gavin Cameron in a thick jacket, standing beside the signpost at Land's End.

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When to Veer Off-Course

I’m a founding member of a monthly writing group called the Wyverns. Over the decade or so of existence, the format has remained relatively constant. A prompt or theme is agreed upon at each session and the members strive to write a poem on that theme for the following session, in return for constructive feedback.

These prompts are generally abstract or open to interpretation because our members write in a variety of styles. Recent themes include peace, cartoon characters and view or scene. I couldn’t make it to the last meeting, so I’m not aware of the conversation that happened, only that the resulting prompt was the more specific Devices that control our lives.

Importantly, the prompts are not mandatory but are treated as a springboard that members can use for their work. As such, this is one of the few instances where I’m considering not following it and instead submitting work on another topic.

On the one hand, I’m up for a challenge. Some of the most difficult prompts have resulted in superior work that I might not have achieved with a simpler one. On the other hand, I’m growing weary of hearing such endless discussions and debates, let alone contributing to them.

It’s not always wise to evade the brief. Try submitting a piece to a competition that isn’t within the rules and I guarantee the editor will have binned it by the time the ink dries on the rejection letter. But there are instances where it’s acceptable to change the nature of what you’re writing.

In 2019, I was looking to write a short joke about how YouTube originally started as a mail-order video-rental catalogue. The more I considered the idea, the more detail I kept adding. It turned into a 1,700-word short story. In the process, it morphed from a one-liner into a satirical alternate history, yet I was pleased with the outcome.

I’m still considering what to do with the Wyverns prompt, but I do intend to submit something before our meeting next month.

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Trying My Hand at a Chapbook

In the world of writing, there are all sorts of routes to publication for poetry and short stories, but they divide roughly into two main types.

The first is a competition format. This usually requires payment of an entry fee, which goes towards a cash prize for the winner – and sometimes runners-up – along with publication. I don’t normally enter these. Among other reasons, the cost is often excessive and the rules of entry tend to be complex and sometimes contradictory.

I much prefer the second format: an open call from a publisher. This is typically free and simple to enter, although the trade-off is a lesser payment, if any is offered at all. Here, the glory lies largely in publication and a contributor’s copy.

That said, the 2025 Rattle Chapbook Prize recently caught my attention. In this competition, the publisher wants poetry chapbook submissions of between 15 and 30 pages. Three winners, anonymously judged by the editors, will receive $5,000 and 500 copies of the book.

I’ve wanted to compile a collection for some time now, so this seemed the ideal opportunity. Additionally, unpublished individual poems from the manuscripts may also be offered standard publication in Rattle.

I’d already settled on a theme of self-confidence and romantic relationships, so I looked through the 200 folders in my poetry archive, hoping to find 12 suitable pieces. I found 11, and I wanted them to flow by mood, almost telling a story. Yet they wouldn’t fall into a suitable order no matter how they were arranged.

As the deadline was closing in, a solution eventually presented itself. I added a 12th poem that wasn’t on the same theme but could be read as such with some canny placement. I then wrote a 13th piece lifting some elements from that poem but taking them in a different direction, and these two act as bookends for the chapbook.

The other problem happened around the middle of the collection, where two poems with contrasting moods disrupted the flow. I separated them by writing a very short 14th piece, just two lines long, but it worked to calm the waters.

The winners will be announced in mid-April, so I’ll be sure not to submit the same poems anywhere else until then. In the likely event that my work isn’t accepted, I still have a chapbook to submit elsewhere or perhaps even to publish myself.

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Pencil, Paper and Privacy

I’m in a poetry circle called the Wyverns. Each month, we write a piece and share it with the rest of the group, inviting constructive feedback from the others.

This month, the prompt was Cartoon characters. With only four days until the next meeting and a hazy idea about what to write, I churned out a piece and an introduction directly into an email. After checking it over for any obvious errors, it was then sent to the other members.

When I told the group about how I’d composed the poem, it started off a discussion about the writing process, primarily whether we used paper to start, or entered it straight into a computer.

Typically, my pieces do start on paper. I make sure to buy a diary with plenty of note pages because these double as my notebook. It was a habit I developed a few years ago because I was typing all day at work, and it was a relief to pick up a pencil instead.

As I’m a touch-typist, writing by hand is considerably slower, but it can also allow more time to think about the text while composing. Paper also affords a less linear approach, freely allowing the addition of words with a carat mark or margin notes. A word processor, by contrast, typically likes to restrict the user to one line. There are odd exceptions like Microsoft OneNote, which can be used as a digital scrapbook.

I find writing by hand works best for prose and poetry. These blog entries are composed much more quickly, often in reaction to something that’s happened the same week, so these are entered straight into WordPress. I run a writing group every Tuesday and I often use that time to polish them off.

While we’re here, if you do a lot of writing on a computer in a public place, my advice is to buy a privacy screen immediately.

You can see the image straight on, or slightly to the left or right, while anyone looking at too steep an angle won’t be able to make anything out. Mine attaches with unobtrusive clear pads and stays permanently in place, but some other designs are removable.

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Poetry Connections and Train Connections

Although it happened too late to write up in this blog, I was at the Inn Deep bar in Glasgow last Tuesday for the launch of The SpecBook 2024. One of my poems had been published by – as the name suggests – Speculative Books.

Copies of the collection had been sent out to contributors, but as mine was lost in the post, I collected one there. What I didn’t realise is that there are actually two small volumes. It was great to see my name in print other than in poetry group pamphlets.

Part one of the schedule was devoted to the published readers, so the first section lasted for a long while. The audience were reminded to support rather than heckle, which is exactly what I would say.

Part two was given over to an open-mic, where anyone could read a poem, whether they were in the book or not. I even met someone I knew from my former open-mic, but I wasn’t able to stay long enough to hear her work.

That was because I’d never visited Inn Deep before and I’d booked my travel cautiously. I’d allowed plenty of time between connections, going from one coast of Scotland to the other. As it happens, this worked out so well that I was home an hour earlier than expected.

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Cycling Around

On Thursday, realising I had a free evening, I took the opportunity to see some performance art. This was hosted by my pal Luke ‘Luca’ Cockayne, who was reading a series of autobiographical pieces over the span of 12 hours. I only had time to see around two hours.

I don’t want to focus on the performance itself, particularly because the aftermath is still on for the next five days. Rather, I want to look at something I did during that performance.

One of the organisers handed out pens and paper to the tiny audience with the intention that we could draw if we felt inspired. Much as Luca has tried to teach me some art, I’m still far more inclined to write by default.

I enjoy the challenge of improvising poetry on the spot, so my rough plan was to compose a rough version based on the performance I could see in front of me, and then extract a polished version from that. Yet after writing my so-called polished version, I felt it didn’t quite work, so I tried another.

I ultimately ended up with a total of seven poems. Put together, they form a cycle of sorts, each of which approaches what I want to say without being able to cut to the heart of the matter.

I feel there are diamonds to be dug out of the mess here, so I’m going to keep these drafts for the moment until I find some sort of home for them.

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A Short Trip Across the Water

Every March, I make a point of going to the St Andrews poetry festival, or StAnza. While I’m there, I take the opportunity to visit a pal who lives at the back end of town.

A couple of years ago, he lent me a poetry book – Occasional Poems by Callum Rodger – which I thoroughly enjoyed. I recently found it again while clearing out some old papers, and I asked whether he wanted it back, which he did. I happened to have some free time that coming Saturday, so I arranged to pop over.

He was unwell on the day of the visit, but I didn’t plan to stay long anyway, as I had other places to be before and afterwards. I was glad of the visit because I came away with several suggestions for novels to read, to the point where I’m considering reactivating my Audible account.

St Andrews is also home to my nearest branch of Topping & Co, somewhere else I usually make a point of visiting, but time wasn’t on my side. There will always be a next time, though.

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A Personal Path to Paisley

Back in July, I mentioned I had my poem January & You published by Speculative Books. The launch was scheduled for Tuesday of last week in Glasgow.

I knew I wouldn’t have much time to catch the bus after the end of my shift. As such, I’d kept my phone off to avoid any distractions, only turning it back on once I was on the bus. Shortly after it pulled away, however, I received an email. It explained the launch had to be cancelled because of illness, with apologies for the short notice. There is a hope to reschedule it for later in the year.

My time on a Tuesday evening is typically ring-fenced to run a writing group, but I’d arranged with the other leader to make an exception. Had I seen this before we started moving, I might just have cut my losses on the cost of the tickets and stayed in Dundee to help out with the group. Now I was stuck on the bus for around 45 more minutes until we reached the park-and-ride in Perth, so I considered my options.

I could have stopped there and found my way back to Dundee. But some of the buses are painfully slow and infrequent, while the railway station is at the other end of Perth, so I might not have made it back before the group was over. Besides, booking at the last minute is never cheap.

Instead, since I knew the writing group was in good hands, I elected to continue to Glasgow and then on to Paisley.

I was at university there between 2002 and 2005 taking a BSc Music Technology course, long before I was interested in prose and poetry. While I’d been back several times, my most memorable visit took place in 2017 when I thought I might find some inspiration for poetry.

I did find inspiration, but not in the way I’d expected. In short, I barely recognised the place beyond the town centre and I wrote an entry about this when it happened.

Today, I would have taken the time to find the layout of the area, see where the side streets were leading and work out the most convenient way to visit other places. For example, I used to volunteer at a community radio station in the Glasgow district of Govan. I can’t understand why I always paid extra for buses when I can now look at a map and see two more direct routes covered by my travel card.

I didn’t intend for this entry to be so personal, but I also didn’t intend to visit my alma mater. If there was a silver lining, it’s that the resulting poem from 2017 was published in a collection about the town. The more I think about it, the more I’m inspired to write a sequel, so I’ll see where that takes me over the coming days.

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Last Call for Creative Scotland Open Fund

Over the last couple of days, Creative Scotland has announced the closure of its Open Fund for Individuals.

In short, the decision has been taken because the Scottish Government were unable to confirm the release of £6.6m in the Grant-in-Aid budget. There is a full statement about the closure on their website including the deadline for all applications: 2pm on Friday 30 August.

As the closure has only just been announced, the long-term effects have yet to be seen. The topic has dominated my recent conversations with other organisers. One possible outcome is that it will be more difficult for artists to host riskier solo events, and instead prompt them to join established companies who might be less willing to take risks.

I’ve been fortunate in my projects that I’ve never needed to apply for funding. Yet having this avenue cut off potentially limits the scale of my future endeavours. I hope next year’s budget brings a more favourable result.

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Submitting to Publishers Again

About a month ago, Speculative Books told me they would be publishing one of my poems in September, and I look forward to attending the launch. On the other hand, I subscribe to Writing Magazine, but there are a pile of unopened copies in my bedroom.

A couple of days ago, on a whim, I decided to open the latest one. I used to read the articles, but now I flip straight to the publishing opportunities, considering each one on its merits.

For starters, I discount any competitions or pay-to-publish schemes. This extends to those publishers that offer no payment nor even a copy of the book. Sometimes an opportunity seems legit on the surface, but the description on the website is unclear, self-contradictory or occasionally unhinged. One site was even blocked by my VPN as a threat, so that was soon dismissed.

From that magazine, I found a handful of possible publishers. In one case, I even had a story ready to go. In another case, I need to wait until the next submission window opens, but that’s clearly marked in my diary.

Now I need to find the time to go through the rest of the magazines and see who’s still accepting pieces after all these months.