Poetry & Prose Round-up: Songs of Summer

Hello and welcome to the round-up  for poetry and prose posted in the month of July and my second stint as Poetry & Prose Editor.  Ironically as I was reading more of your work  some of you may have seen the post titled Are Too Many People Writing Poetry?  doing the rounds. It struck me as a rather silly question to ask,  how can there be such a thing as too much poetry? I mean how would that even work? Oi you, yes you there with your pen in your hand about to write poem 284950 of the year.  Put the pen down and step away from the paper, we have enough poems thank you!  Not enough people reading poetry?  Perhaps. But writing it? No, no.  I could never agree with that.

Writing serves so many more purposes than just producing something that gets published.  Emily’s poem about the power of words reminded me of this and also brought to mind an article on how a woman was helped through depression by the process of reading and writing poetry.

Despite the discussion about whether or not people are writing too much poetry it has been a quiet time of year for creative writing for many of us who are taking some kind of break.  I find it fascinating to see how writing slots into people’s lives, for me a break would be more  creative writing not less!  But writing serves different purposes for different people.  

Clearly not taking a break was muddledmanuscript who wrote this fun little piece about participating in Camp NanoWrimo, a free challenge where participants try to write a novel in a month.  I have a lot of respect for this challenge and love that it gets so many people writing.  I even tried it once, producing a really dreadful young adult story that I shall never inflict upon the world!  The next event takes place in November, plenty of time to plan your own novel. 

Sharing a poem performed at the Virtual Open Mic Night Secrets of the Sandpit uses her writing to explore childhood memories while Tealadymumbles writes about the complexity of motherhood in the haunting poem You Were Mine for Nine Months

Redpeffer took the opportunity to participate in the Paper Swans Body Beautiful project by sharing some prose on the theme of body image, you can still get involve in this community project with your own posts, prose and poems here.  Also on the theme of the Body Beautiful project the last line of this poem  by waiting to blossom really struck me as a kind of truth telling

Finally I prided myself on  being able to avoid all football related activity last month until I read rambling through parenthood’s poem about the Brazil match which made nice use of rhyme (apparently Brazil did not fair so well).

This month there was  more good news for the writers in the BritMum’s community with Ellie from Poetry & Pandemonium having a poem accepted for publication by the excellent webzine Ink, Sweat and Tears while PaperSwans ran a successful micropoetry competition where winners will have their work taken to the Edinburgh Festival.  I was delighted to have a poem accepted for the next issue of Prole and was thrilled to learn that I made the short list for the Stanza Digital Slam.  Why not have a wee listen to the final ten and cast your vote?

Next month Victoria is taking a well-earned break from prose for thought but the virtual open mic night is free and open to all who would like to come and share their work as well as have a wee bleather with other people who like to write.  The next open mic takes place on Wednesday 27th of August, we would love to see you there.http://redpeffer.me.uk/writing-2/tale-tail-tell/As promised in my first round-up post I intend to share a piece of work with you each month and I had originally planned to pick something from one of the previous Stanza Digital Slams but I felt a recent piece by Michael Rosen was more urgent.  It is called Don’t Mention the Children, the title speaks for itself.    Sometimes when things like Gaza happen I wonder if poetry has a point but I think this piece proves that it does.