Its nearly time for me to leave this wonderful home here for a brief stop in UK before I travel to the AMEE conference in Prague. I'm slowing preparing myself for a week of intensive work ... there are so many Best Evidence Medical Education sessions at the conference this year, thanks to all the hard working review groups and the BEME Board.
If this is all new to you BEME has a great website http://www.bemecollaboration.org/ and can be found on FB as BEME and on Twitter @BestEviMedEd. Follow and like us to learn more.
Meanwhile I'm looking forward to one more hot and sunny day with family, dogs, and chickens.
Monday, August 19, 2013
Friday, August 16, 2013
Review Poetry the city with horns
Tamar Yoseloff's 'the city with horns' is a fine collection, well curated into 3 sections, with poems about Jackson Pollock the feature in the middle and the city (and other places) in winter and summer at the beginning and the end.
There are some great examples here of the power of focusing on one thing -Concrete, Stamps and Field were favourites of mine. Tamar crafts her poems well, sometimes making the reader work but that's just fine, and often surprising us with the direction and the ending. For me four stars go to the penultimate poem Jetty, longer than most with lyrical and compelling language, this is a joy to read, I read it again and again, and will return.
There are some great examples here of the power of focusing on one thing -Concrete, Stamps and Field were favourites of mine. Tamar crafts her poems well, sometimes making the reader work but that's just fine, and often surprising us with the direction and the ending. For me four stars go to the penultimate poem Jetty, longer than most with lyrical and compelling language, this is a joy to read, I read it again and again, and will return.
Thursday, August 15, 2013
Poems and buttons
Its been yet another very hot day, good for indoor tasks like more sorting my poems out -made all the more worthwhile by a super fast acceptance message (3 of 5 poems sent yesterday) from the Camroc Press Review see http://www.camrocpressreview.com. Such a quick response and very motivating. I've been learning more and more about Duotrope https://duotrope.com and I am seriously thinking about a subscription.
Also today I acquired an extensive button collection at the great expense of 5 euro -definitely my bargain of this year's vide greniers. Of course, there are hundreds of very ordinary ones for each rather special button, but I guess that what happens! At least now I have some choice of what to decorate the cafetiere cosies, bookwraps and ipad covers I've been making. Here they all are, piled up on the deck -and there's more waiting for the right colour lining .... good free motion quilting practice.
Also today I acquired an extensive button collection at the great expense of 5 euro -definitely my bargain of this year's vide greniers. Of course, there are hundreds of very ordinary ones for each rather special button, but I guess that what happens! At least now I have some choice of what to decorate the cafetiere cosies, bookwraps and ipad covers I've been making. Here they all are, piled up on the deck -and there's more waiting for the right colour lining .... good free motion quilting practice.
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
all through today
Another very hot day, wall to wall blue sky, and motivated by one more publication success (watch this space for details) I've joined Duotrope https://duotrope.com and sent some more poems and some prose out into the tough and very wide world of publishing.
Can't believe its taken me so long to organise my poems and bits and pieces of prose but at last the excel spreadsheet ties into the document filing system! I'd so much rather be writing ...
And in between I've planted lots of succulents to 'decorate' my wonderful terrace ... plants that can tolerate neglect are just what's needed here, and sat in the sun and shade reading -a blessing.
Can't believe its taken me so long to organise my poems and bits and pieces of prose but at last the excel spreadsheet ties into the document filing system! I'd so much rather be writing ...
And in between I've planted lots of succulents to 'decorate' my wonderful terrace ... plants that can tolerate neglect are just what's needed here, and sat in the sun and shade reading -a blessing.
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
Published Poem in Prole
Bonjour ... another warm morning, not yet completely sunny but everywhere feels fresh after soothing overnight rain.
My writing rewards are mainly self satisfying, just occasionally all that pen to paper brings something else, and having one of my poems published comes very high on that list. I wrote Handed Down during Tamar Yoseloff's (http://invectiveagainstswans.tumblr.com/) great 'poetry and the visual' on-line Poetry School (http://www.poetryschool.com) course from, I think, a picture of an old woman who had hands that were full of personality!
So Handed Down is in Issue 11 of Prole, you can buy this from the website and follow, like, read more about Prole from all these links
Thank you, Brett and Phil, for choosing my poem, just what I need to write more and, especially, to send out what becomes written.
My writing rewards are mainly self satisfying, just occasionally all that pen to paper brings something else, and having one of my poems published comes very high on that list. I wrote Handed Down during Tamar Yoseloff's (http://invectiveagainstswans.tumblr.com/) great 'poetry and the visual' on-line Poetry School (http://www.poetryschool.com) course from, I think, a picture of an old woman who had hands that were full of personality!
So Handed Down is in Issue 11 of Prole, you can buy this from the website and follow, like, read more about Prole from all these links
Website: www.prolebooks.co.uk Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Prole/236155444300?v=wall News blog at: http://prolebooks.blogspot. com/ Twitter at: https://twitter.com/#!/ Prolebooks Reader/writer blog: http://readwriteblog. prolebooks.co.uk/
Thank you, Brett and Phil, for choosing my poem, just what I need to write more and, especially, to send out what becomes written.
Monday, August 5, 2013
Review: Sacred Hunger
There are so many wonderful books that I have yet to read and Barry Unsworth's Sacred Hunger is now off that list, and off the list of truly wonderful books I almost missed. Thanks to my book group I've been immersed in the power and tension of Sacred Hunger for several days.
This is not easy book to read, several times I wanted to close my eyes, not see, as it were, the cruelty and arrogance of men, the taken for granted-ness by those in the past who colonised the land and lives of others.
So this is a book that, almost, one needs to read; but it carries its lessons lightly and is carefully planned to gather in from its disparate parts and characters the whole story. Unsworth is a master narrator, guiding the reader through the personal journeys of the characters, and over the landscapes travelled, both physical and emotional.
It would have been good to have had a cast list as a reminder about who was who in the ships crew ... but that aside this is a great book: well written, deeply authentic with the rare ability to provoke a range of emotions in the reader.
Really looking forward to chatting about this with my book group; its a long read and the subject may deter some so interesting in the first place to find out which of us got to the last page.
This is not easy book to read, several times I wanted to close my eyes, not see, as it were, the cruelty and arrogance of men, the taken for granted-ness by those in the past who colonised the land and lives of others.
So this is a book that, almost, one needs to read; but it carries its lessons lightly and is carefully planned to gather in from its disparate parts and characters the whole story. Unsworth is a master narrator, guiding the reader through the personal journeys of the characters, and over the landscapes travelled, both physical and emotional.
It would have been good to have had a cast list as a reminder about who was who in the ships crew ... but that aside this is a great book: well written, deeply authentic with the rare ability to provoke a range of emotions in the reader.
Really looking forward to chatting about this with my book group; its a long read and the subject may deter some so interesting in the first place to find out which of us got to the last page.
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