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'.
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