POETRY MACHINE

Monday 2nd April 2018

Last day of the holiday weekend at Jen’s. Chuffed to get GloPoWriMo piece done before breakfast. Lazy time watching Columbo, and Gunsmoke. Out this afternoon for veggie burgers. Left Jen’s place at quarter past eight this evening. Pleased I had bin-bag and carriers to wrap book stock because my wheelie case is absolute toilet. Loads of slush on the path from Consett to Moorside. Walked down the road and had to step back onto snow-covered grass, support the case with a foot, every time a car went past. Persistent rain now, little rivers everywhere. Back home by ten and clothes changed. Jenni messaged to let me know Corrie was a big Wow so I watched the second episode via the ITV Hub on my tablet. Phelan made it out the sea. Utter bollocks! He’s a total bastard and I hope he’s jailed soon. 

11.37 pm.

Tuesday 3rd April 2018

Pleasing GloPoWriMo draft. I’m trying to stay on topic with official daily prompts. Hopefully there won’t be any sonnets or sestinas when I’m busy later in the month. Did some more focused journal. Tried flash fiction but struggled with it. Snow has gone. Busy all day, seem to be getting headaches if I’m at the computer for too long. Today was way too long. Didn’t get any fiction typed up. Hands hurting all evening. Tomorrow’s writing half-marathon is sorted. Looking forward to it. Be good to have new poems for Poetry Jams. 10.50 pm.

Wednesday 4th April 2018

Used my resistance to GloPoWriMo prompt for a bit of ranting and posted just after half-nine this morning. Pleased with all the pieces I’ve written so far this week. Lots to tweak, but still okay. Posted my penultimate ‘book that blew my mind’ online: Wanda Coleman’s stories and poems collection 'African Sleeping Sickness'. Got it in 1991/2, loaned it out about eight years later, never got it back. Might buy another copy. Jenni did a great new piece for GloPoWriMo. She’s on form this week. Half-marathon went well. Everyone involved produced promising work and I got a couple of things to definitely work further. Came home feeling physically sick (something I ate?) but a bit better now. Sick to death of the snow. Hope Poetry Jam’s still okay for tomorrow. Hello, fucking April! Six months of cold. Enough now. OK. Done. 11.06 pm.

Thursday 5th April 2018

Good to break routine by going shopping after the poem this morning. Looked at music mags, bought food then back to eat and pack for Poetry Jam. Keyed in a new piece at Waddy and read it tonight. All the guests – Michael Pittuck, Cath Campbell and Jeff Price – were mint. Plenty good open floor as well. Thanks to Fergus for set up and lift back. I ate too much chocolate today, but it still feels like winter at home. Until things improve I’ll keep on downing comfort food. 11.33 pm.

Friday 6th April 2018

GloPoWriMo prompts are getting tougher by the day, but I’ll keep on chugging away. My trouble is I wanted to be a rock star and substituted poetry for being in a band. These days even novelists can’t earn a crust so where the fuck does that leave the likes of me? – a free verse scribbler who hasn’t got a single sustained prose work in their entire output. Rock and roll casualty – what’s the poetic equivalent? Basically the village idiot laughed out of the job centre, that’s what. And of course you look a right sad fuck moaning about it in a blog post. I switched off the computer around nine coz it was so fucking slow. Don’t know if it’s the broadband or the processor. But tonight it was barely alive. Anyway, I need to get knocking on doors next week. The money is dwindling and there’s no way of replacing it by playing hermetic scribe, is there? Fuck it, I might live another twenty years yet. 10.15 pm.

Saturday 7th April 2018

Staying at home this weekend. Keyed in the latest GloPoWriMo poem. Haven’t been outside today. Keep checking out jobs online. But nothing for me really. Pleased to get a bunch of material that I might be able to use in the future. Spent much of the evening listening to Alison Moyet and tapping away at the keyboard. Computer not so bad today. 10.37 pm.

Sunday 8th April 2018

Spent a very long time this morning on a GloPoWriMo poem. Wrote loads of lines but pared back to just fourteen. Watched a couple of Courtney Love documentaries this evening. Good to check out some nineties small-press poetry magazines again. Almost a quarter century since I first got a copy of The Wide Skirt. Enjoyed poems in Dog by Nigel Burch. Found out online that he’s a singer songwriter in a London punk folk trio described by The Guardian as “a cross between the music of Ian Dury, Brecht and Weil, an Irish pub band and a 1950s skiffle group”. 11.10 pm.