The last post was about Manuscript Bootcamp, a weekend-long workshop where we got to hunker down and work on our manuscripts with several industry professionals and literary figures. As part of the Bootcamp, we had a “Presentation of Works”, where we got to talk about our work and how it has changed after the bootcamp. […]
Tag: creative writing
Manuscript Bootcamp – Thoughts and Reflections
So, over the last weekend I’ve attended Manuscript Bootcamp (see last post), an intensive 3-day programme where your manuscript gets absolutely slaughtered and picked clean by various people in the industry, from writers to editors and beyond. As mentioned, given that the programme comes only once every two years for poetry, and that only 6 […]
SELF PORTRAIT AS OWN BIRTH
If two sameselves make a paradox, then so is my birth;one roll of the die with infinite sides.I oscillate between possibilitieslike a speck of dustcaught in vision. A child of coincidence, one branch of Yggdrasil, born to yearn for fruit. I’d like to reconfirm my own existence, ensure that I was some other unknown in […]
TIME
Time lies, useless as a swordin the lake. For one, there’s time,and then, there is passage, as income, squeeze the cheeks of this little tragedy. Who will offerthe world their breast? I’m sat, couched deep in tomorrow,hands on the pulse. Tomorrow I willflip onto the pavement and pound itInto confession. Tomorrow I will flip on […]
BLUE
The taste of dish soap lingerson the rim of the teacup. You and I sit at crossroads, legsdangling over cliffs. This isan exercise in communicationby proxy, messages hiddenin the fold of an arm. Coltrane murmurs in the background likea roommate, and the televisionis switched off. This is timeless,this is the way we freeze-frame our lives, […]
INFLUENCE
Blog time: I have this thing where I’ve always been struggling to think of people who have influenced my writing. Being more a writer than a reader when I started, I guess I didn’t have proper influence during my ‘formative years’ as a writer. While later on, I did find plenty of poets who […]
As You Roamed The Earth, You Felt The Drying Skin of Age Itself
it is the waking that is the hardest. the first step in sleep deprivation: you learn you miss dreaming of holes, the spaces between lines, the gap between the train and platform. you dream of ways in which to die, how the train brushes against your feet, the space just big enough for your thigh. […]
A POEM CELEBRATING SOME THINGS THAT DON’T WORK
Acrostics. Academia. Balancing work, life and a healthy sleep schedule. Breaking up in your head with people you don’t even go out with. Confessing to your first love at the wrong place and time. Denial when you don’t mean it. Even if you do mean it, does that really work? English as second tongue. Editing. […]
IN THIS STORY, YOU SAYING HOW YOU FEEL “ALL RIGHT” IS NOT A CAUSE FOR CONCERN
In this dream, you shed your skin and cast away your leather wings; from your pockets, spill these things – antiplatelet medicines, Clopidogrel, Aspirin. Warfarin, for battles within. In another, I hold your chin and nothing else. Come, unspin this long dream of safety pins and other stories, wherein the might of the might-have-been becomes […]
13 Superstitions for a Damsel in Distress
On the backstreet home, watch out for black cats stalking your footsteps. Don’t step in puddles with your high-heeled horseshoes: the clack draws all sorts of bad folk. Knock on wooden doors along the way – let them know you are there, once, or twice: unexpected deaths come in threes. Ring every bell – let […]
ugly stage 