In which I change names....how very Hollywood!

I'm sitting here incubating a cold .Nothing out of the ordinary for most people. But I haven't had a cold for over 5 years.  Now I'm not showing off , it's simply that for 3 of those years I've been house bound by a balance disorder which is 50% controlled by drugs now . However' the dizzies ' the devil may care name we MAV sufferers give to the disorder implying somehow, it's fun do join us, is often exacerbated by a virus such as the common cold...so I am braced to see what is going to happen. I do feel dizzier so have good old brain sedating Valium at the ready.

The reason for this preamble or ramble is that right now poetry and dizzies are inter linked for me. Rendered house bound for so many years, I had nothing else to  do but write everyday . Previously as teacher I could only write at snatched times during holidays or the odd work free weekend , so I never really improved. However, something happened two years ago.  I read 'In the palm of your hand', a poetry hand book by Steve Kowitt which helped me understand 'show don't tell' so  improved my writing and  lead to a swiftly written sequence of poems about my mother and the past . I sent them off to publishers and one Saturday evening as I was working in my Zoo on Face Book whilst simultaneously watching 'Strictly', ( How's that for an evening),  a phone call came through from Doug at Koo Press.....when after a long conversation I meekly asked' So are you going to publish?'  I was absolutely euphoric at his response and rang everyone I knew , especially my enemies.

So now I have two ambitions,  trying to get better and trying to get better at poetry, which is why I changed the name of the blog to 'the dizzy poet'.

something about a title

I do like collections with quirky titles . For example I 've just read about a pamphlet called Mr Luczinski makes a move by Peter Daniels. I think it's the name that I am attracted to it conjures up a sense of character and the phrase 'makes a move 'is intriguing suggesting something a bit shady.

The same applies to the titles of poems , if I'm trawling through anthologies or indeed the Internet (my second home)  when there is so much good poetry to read..it's the strange or blackly humerous title that makes me stop.

Selima Hill is the mistress of the bizarre title both for her poems and collections . Her most recent pamphlet ' How to wear animal prints' caught my interest immediately and the collection does not disappoint.

First Post

 The idea behind this blog is to chart my misadventures as a writer and indeed any other unusual events that cross my path. I like the odd , the overlooked and 15 years of teaching as trained me to notice almost everything. Indeed I am surprised when my far more clever friends discoursing about themselves tend to miss things . An example of this would be during afternoon tea in a hotel where my brilliant friend, who has a first , failed to notice the women sporting wigs who very clearly were all going through chemotherapy.

I called this blog ' a poet manque' because I love the word manque.....aspiring to but not actually making it often attributed to failed actors. I adopted this title not in a self pitying way , I am too old for that but as evidence of self knowledge .

So in this spirit....I am the world's worst net worker . In  my attempts to infiltrate the poerty community I attended another poetry reading at Canterbury Library.  Again I was that most dangerous of creatures, a woman on her own ,  that seems to have the same effect on the room as if a tiger had just walked in.  Consequently no one approached me and it was in fact very cliquey mostly because they all knew each other and were doing the MA at UCK. MA s in writing my bete noir.  I do  feel that if I saw a woman sitting on her own I would approach and talk to her .  I was eventually saved by a charming elderly lady who is herself a very fine poet. Why is it I wonder that the older generation are so open ,well mannered ready to talk to any one?

Part of the blame may lie in me.Because the poets are all so confident of their works' value and indeed are prize winners in some cases, I go into 'meeting famous people mode' . This is why I feel too shy to approach them myself so who knows I may be misinterpreted as standoffish?

Anyways, the poets were excellent. The poems were clipped, accomplished and in a different class to my efforts. Maybe MA s are poets' finishing schools because they seem so polished and made my baggy old efforts amateur  by comparisons. They achieve a level that I really don't think I can achieve.  So I came away feeling firmly put in my place. Still as I exited the cathedral bells were ringing , it was a  wonderful sound.