Monday, January 28, 2008

Pretending Poems Don't Exist

I decided that I no longer care much for some of the poems I've published - some in print mags, some in webzines - that have ended up on the web and were linked to from the right-hand column on this blog.

So I've just deleted those particular links. The poems are still out there, of course, but I can now at least pretend to myself that they're not.

3 comments:

Jim Murdoch said...

Yes, I know how that feels. Luckily most of the poems I feel that way about were published before there was an internet. I'm actually working on a blog about this at the moment where I look back at some poems I was so chuffed with myself over and realise that they only worked because half of the poems were still in my head; that's why I thought they were so brilliant. Now I've forgotten all of that all that's left is what made it to the page and, with a lot of them, it's not quite enough.

Unknown said...

Woah! I thought it was just me... Jim makes a good point about poems needing to be stayed long enough to get the whole thing out on the page.

I know what you mean about Carson reading (further back, just catching up). I heard him read at the launch of the Yellow Nib in Belfast last autumn. We have him for a module in Translation later on this term!

Rob said...

Jim, Barbara - yes that's an interesting point, one I hadn't considered before.

For me, it's just that certain types of poem I was writing a year or so ago don't satisfy me any more. I still write rubbish of course, and sometimes I have fun doing so, but these ones stay well away from my submission pile these days. Consequently, my submission pile is quite small.