I’d committed to describing “poetry in motion” … where my poems are moving… and neglected to celebrate my December 2015 collection called Prickly Kindness. Grateful that I’ve had enough poems arrive to put together 5 collections since 2013. Grateful for the way they are touching some of the people who read them.
All this summer sunlight and the occasion of my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary… imagine!… meant good momentum to put together my latest poetry compilation, Thirsty Bloom. With gratitude to all the sources that help us bloom.
I was pleased to have a conversation with online radio host Susan Brender about why I write the way I do… you can listen here.
Months since my last post… but there have been verdant moments. I was pleased to share my collection Grunt Work with friends and family in December. There is a new collection gradually gathering itself for release, the poems continue to flow and I am grateful. Have also been taking a few more steps towards building skills for honouring my craft. In springtime things can seem to be inert but there is much going on underneath.
My poems are crawling along towards some unseen new place and I am posting this only as a way of marking movement… to say another manuscript will be birthed soon… and to say thanks to the folks at this link: http://northerncardinalreview.wordpress.com/2014/11/30/public-consultation-by-heather-finton/
It’s been a fairly productive almost-year since my last visit to this site… took time almost every day for reflection and writing, have now completed two poetry collections with working titles “Joy Landing” and “Mucky Garden”. Seem to be writing about 15 – 20 poems a month, even though this site has been silent. While many of them may not qualify as good poems, I am grateful for their arising and the way that I learn from them, and work things out in the writing of them.
This new “category” of posts marks my re-entry into the world of posting and my commitment to sharing my writing. It is a category for telling the story of where these poems travel. In this case, I want to acknowledge a few very polite acquisitions editors who have mastered the art of letting people down gently – thanks to Ronsdale Press and Lost Moose for conveying a gentleness of spirit that is missing in everyday culture. I’m not going to use this category for listing all the places the poems get rejected, but in order to be faithful to the “moving outward” process I feel some honesty about the “moving only inward” is required when the poems are not jumping towards publication!
Also want to acknowledge that my friend and teacher Bonnie has been most eloquent and generous in sharing her reactions to my poems, and that this kind of movement, as she shares the words with her friends, is the kind of genuine motion that I honour here.