I have failed spectacularly at updating this blog and I don't know that I should apologise for something I am so good at.
Anyway, there is News.
I have been invited by India Today's web-only magazine, The Daily O, to contribute a fortnightly column on poetry. It was meant to be a curatorial column, where I trawl the web and social media and find poems that I curate into a column; but I heard the phrase 'social media' and I shuddered, baulked and felt faint all at the same time, so the editors sat me down, gave me hartshorn and burnt some feathers under my nose and asked me what I wanted to do instead.
I thought I'd do something like the Guardian's Poetry Workshop. I miss it, I miss the poems that the curators found through it.
So that's what I thought I'd do: I'd offer a prompt in one column, and invite contributions which I'd sift through, pick a few and talk about in the next.
I don't know why I am saying all this here, because this is what the first column is more or less about, and you may as well read that, right?
As always, the Naming of Cats and Columns is a Very Important Thing. I think I explained (in the column) how I got to The Sideways Door as a name. Maybe I didn't. If I didn't, tell me in the comments and I'll tell you what other names I considered.
Am I forgetting something? Oh yes - the link to the column: The Sideways Door.
Anyway, there is News.
I have been invited by India Today's web-only magazine, The Daily O, to contribute a fortnightly column on poetry. It was meant to be a curatorial column, where I trawl the web and social media and find poems that I curate into a column; but I heard the phrase 'social media' and I shuddered, baulked and felt faint all at the same time, so the editors sat me down, gave me hartshorn and burnt some feathers under my nose and asked me what I wanted to do instead.
I thought I'd do something like the Guardian's Poetry Workshop. I miss it, I miss the poems that the curators found through it.
So that's what I thought I'd do: I'd offer a prompt in one column, and invite contributions which I'd sift through, pick a few and talk about in the next.
I don't know why I am saying all this here, because this is what the first column is more or less about, and you may as well read that, right?
As always, the Naming of Cats and Columns is a Very Important Thing. I think I explained (in the column) how I got to The Sideways Door as a name. Maybe I didn't. If I didn't, tell me in the comments and I'll tell you what other names I considered.
Am I forgetting something? Oh yes - the link to the column: The Sideways Door.
5 comments:
what were the other names?
'O' wants me to sign in with twitter to comment in the context of the column. hm. is this like saying 'socialize like everyone else or die alone'?
not sure if i will ever have a twitter account. too many things to consider. but yeah, will keep checking the page to see what comes up. illegal medications shouldn't be too bad either. for some, the experience of poetry is like that.
I tried to come up with something suitably congratulatory-cum-excited, and all I got was:
"woooot!"
I need to stop reading the net.
David: Comment here! I know what you mean abt not being bullied into opening social media accounts one has no wish to have.
Names...I need to go find that notebook in which I had all my scribbles. None were very exciting.
??!: Have a smiley in return:D
Congratulations! I did read that column a week ago, thoroughly enjoyed it and hope that young'uns are inspired to read poetry because of it.
There is a poem author David Mitchell quoted as his favorite in a piece in the Atlantic. I thought it was quite lovely. http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/09/the-simple-profound-act-of-perceiving-the-world/380659/
km: thanks for that link - it's a lovely poem and a lovely piece to go with it. Bone Clocks tho...(have you read it?)
Also, narrowing eyes suspiciously at you. You lurk, don't you?
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