Blog Jest

That’s what my mother used to say, especially on a Sunday: today we have jests for lunch.

So this week I was a jest on Anthony Wilson’s blog, the first time I have ever jested on another person’s site. So that’s my blogging juice used up for this week and I refer you to that place to read about Andrew Waterhouse, a poet alive in my head though not on the planet. 

But while you’re here, if you haven’t already noticed, there’s a whole bit of HappenStance website now dedicated to How (Not) to Get Your Poetry Published.You see it from the main page in a tab at the top highlighted with a little red star. Click here and you zip to another page which is effectively an advert (designed to restore HappenStance‘s fortunes while doing something useful). But it’s also more than an advert.

There’s another toolbar to the right of this new page, which takes you to various pages with useful links. There could be more.

I’m hoping for comments. And suggestions. I can add more information here. I can do ‘yes buts’. I can do ‘what ifs’. I can highlight relevant news.

New publishers, or publishers doing new things, please alert me to your activities. I can add a ‘new publishers’ tab.

In How (Not) to, there’s a chapter about thinking outside the book, or the box, or whatever you’re currently thinking inside.

Talking of which there was a lovely article in Ghana Web this week about the rise of poetry in Ghana and particular a new book of haiku by Celestine Nudanu. It was an delightful piece in a number of ways. I liked the bit about haiku being ‘laden with a lot of aesthetics, a challenge that discourages less passionate Haiku authors from writing’.

But best of all I liked the opportunity for performer poets. According to Deputy Minister of Tourism, Culture and Creative Arts, Dzifa Abla Gomashie, there is a steady rise of spoken word and poetry in Ghana and in recent times ‘many young people’ have been ‘invited to perform the art to break the monotony of speeches upon speeches when events are organised’. I take these to be political speeches. I do hope so. Because she even noted that ‘this is an avenue for the youth to earn some decent money while they also express themselves creatively’.

I can see a whole new opportunity at the next Labour Party Conference in September. It would certainly make a change.