Friction Magazine

I will never get the hang of this. I write so that people will read what I write... it's easy with poetry... I want you to read my poetry... And I guess I want you to read this too but it seems too much like drawing attention to myself (as opposed to my work).

Anyway, if I can just accept that this blog is probably going to be no more than intermittent and I don't have to blow my own trumpet incessantly then I can probably limit my discomfort long enough to tell you stuff...

I submitted some pomes (yes, I know it should be poems but if I make light of it it's easier... same as doing a spot of poeting sounds less terrifying than performing) to Friction Magazine a new online journal published by Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts and edited by PhD and MA students at Newcastle University and they've only gone and published one. I am pleased. Yes...

But I'm also having to beat down the vicious bastard that's loitering at the back of my head who is trying to get me to believe a number of reasons that I've been included in the first issue other than the one that goes 'they think it's a good poem'. The vicious bastard is called Evil Degs, I've had to battle her before... and I'll probably have to keep battling her before she realises that I'm not going to listen... or I am going to listen but I'm going to do choose not to believe her... or I will believe her but I'll get a second opinion from someone who doesn't live inside my head.

The poets in this first issue and are all worth a read, and then a re-read and then a trawl around the internet, bookshops and libraries to find their other work.

The Whale Road by Bill Herbert
Island Girl by Cynthia Fuller
Household Waste Only by Jake Campbell
At Longsands by Me :-)

I'm going to take time off from my evening facebook addiction and spend some time reading the fiction, non-fiction and reviews over the next few days... now if only I had an ipad to read it on...

http://www.frictionmagazine.co.uk/2010/11/07/at-longsands/