I received some nice news in August: my poem ‘The Pastel Valley’ was longlisted for the international Lucent Dreaming Poetry Prize.
Lucent Dreaming is a publisher of short fiction, flash fiction, and poetry that also runs annual competitions. If you have a story or a poem lingering on your harddrive, these competitions will reopen next year – it could be worth checking them out!
I’m really pleased that ‘The Pastel Valley’ was longlisted. It is a poem that has been rejected quite a few times, but I always maintained in my heart of hearts (and my gut of guts?) that it had some merits; not limitless merits, granted, but solid ones. It’s a allegorical poem (something of an experiment for me) that explores maternal ambivalence and the challenge of finding one’s path. I will continue to seek a good home for it in print – it remains unpublished for now. A sound goal for the coming year.
