My first acceptance of 2021 is now live on The Aesthetic Directory.
The three poems, 'Interview with the Window Cleaner', 'First Haircut after Childbirth' and 'Tide' have all been through several revisions, and the final versions were settled on as a result of some collaborative experimentation with Samuel Verdin, founder and editor of TAD journal.
All three poems were written during the earlylish phase of motherhood, stuck at home with a toddler and a baby. The words were unrefined and each poem took the form of fairly uninspiring free verse stanzas. At the time, I had needed simply to get something onto the page in an attempt to claw back some sanity and selfhood.
In 2020 I was selected to be part of the pilot scheme of MumWrite, an experimental writing development course. I am indebted to Nikki Dudley, founder of MumWrite, for her workshops on experimental techniques and for the encouragement to push the boundaries of my writing. After the course, I went back to these three poems and applied some of the methods I'd been learning. (I should also credit Kate Clanchy's excellent 'How to Grow Your Own Poem' for the Google Translate idea used in 'First Haircut after Childbirth'.)
It was an unexpected pleasure to have the three poems accepted and getting them into their finished form was a really encouraging process. I fully recommend experimenting with words in collaboration with great editors like Nikki, Kate and Samuel.
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