Jane's Writing Shed.

I have to keep reminding myself that I've only been writing poetry seriously for about 10 years so although I'm soon going to be receiving my State Pension in writing terms I'm a relative adolescent. Therefore in common with every other writer I'm learning to deal with rejection and when I'm feeling reasonably sanguine and philosophical I can almost convince myself that I'm not that disappointed. But of course having your batch of poems which you carefully submitted months ago to a well regarded poetry magazine is bound to feel upsetting.  I've had some successes with poetry competitions and poetry magazines but as my rejection letters accumulate,I've reflected about the value that each editor places on communicating rejection and how that feels as a recipient of their subjective judgments. Editors vary hugely in their responses from nothing at all...ever, to returning poems with a blank compliment slip and as happened yesterday a letter from the editor

I bought a secondhand copy of Fred Beake's New and Selected Poems recently on the strength of the inclusion of several poems written after the poet moved to Devon. I'd not heard of him previously but Fred Beake is clearly a very accomplished poet. He was born in Cheshire in 1948 and has written more than a dozen collections of poetry and worked as a translator,editor and critic since the 60s. Here's a poem I was initially drawn to purely for nostalgic reasons. Fred Beake has recently moved to Torquay which is where I was brought up from the age of 6. However I love the poem for its wild and vivid imagery which perfectly suits the cliff-top setting I recall so well. My Love's Walk on Walls Hill. My love went for a walk on Walls Hill       Through the socialising of canines Clutching a green umbrella        Because it was terribly windy And suddenly she and her green umbrella        Went whoosh on the wind away To the summit of the sky       -High! on high

Most Friday lunchtimes we pick up an eight-year old from school and this is my take on what happened one Friday. Friday blew her out of school. The wind was a creature unafraid, it played on the roof of the school, where the weather-vane pointed West. At noon the children freed from lessons, tasted the animalistic air, as they ran or scootered or cycled, two or more abreast, peeling away, away from the rest, brandishing a tooth, a feather, a claw stolen out of the jaw of the fiend. Up on its hind legs all talons and tail chasing through the town, it raced through the woods like a hungry wolf on to the beach, where it reached the tips of the gannets' wings wrestled the clouds, backcombed the rainbow edges of waves, as a child fought with the gale in the guise of a bear, looming ten feet tall. Falling in to a nest full of crows, she dozed,  watching the atomised bodies of birds forming and re-forming above her head, in a vortex of feather and air.

I read poems online, in poetry magazines and on my Kindle but I've also got a burgeoning collection of books - some new but some bought from charity shops and secondhand book shops and some of these are among my favorites. The joy of secondhand book shopping is that for a modest outlay, I can read poems by known and unknown poets. My only problem remains...how to find enough room to put my ever-growing collection. Some examples of my secondhand purchases that I return to again and again - 'The Best of the Best American Poetry 1988 - 1997'  Edited by Harold Bloom. (£4.20) 'The Jacob's Ladder' by Denise Levertov. (£1.99) 'Seeing Things' by Seamus Heaney.(£5.00) The Tulips Red tulips living into their death flushed with a wild blue tulips becoming wings ears of the wind jackrabbits rolling their eyes west wind shaking the loose pane some petals fall with that sound one listens for Denise Levertov.

I received the gift of a poem today from a lovely woman I've known and worked with for several years. The poem,  The Invitation was written by Oriah, a writer originally from Northern Ontario and now living in Toronto, Canada. I've not come across Oriah's writing previously but I love what she says on her blog about 'living as a writer'. The Invitation is inspirational whatever you wish for yourself and I highly recommend reading the full version to be found at www.oriahsinvitation.blogspot.co.uk THE INVITATION It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.                 It doesn't interest me how old you are.I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

I love finding poems in unexpected places so when we were in the Cacti & Succulent House at the Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh on Sunday I was delighted to come across these rocks tucked between the Ferrocactus and the Euphorbia.

I've recently become a subscriber to Orbis which is a quarterly international literary journal. This is an excellent and very lively publication packed full of poems submitted by poets and prose writers from England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, US, New Zealand, China, Denmark and France plus reviews and listings. The editor Carole Baldock also welcomes feedback from readers on published poems and prose which she includes in subsequent issues:a refreshing innovation from a literary editor. Highly recommended.

During the last week I've written a ghost story which could be a prose poem and following a recommendation on R4 I'm reading ' Binocular Vision' a book of inspirational short stories by Edith Pearlman. Also I've re-read May Sarton's poetry collection  ' Letters from Maine'. Perhaps May Sarton isn't as celebrated as she should be. Her poems don't shout they speak with insight and quiet intelligence and are well worth seeking out. Here's a poem for the start of the New Year. For Monet Poets, too, are crazed by light, How to capture its changes, How to be accurate in seizing What has been caught by the eye In an instant's flash - Light through a petal, Iridescence of clouds before sunrise. They, too, are haunted by the need To hold the fleeting still In a design - That vermillion under the haystack, Struck at sunset, Melting into the golden air Yet perfectly defined, An illuminated transience. Today my house is lost in