One Night Stanzas

IMPORTANT THINGS OF THE WEEK:

One: I am running an all-female fiction writing course and if you’re a self-identifying woman, I want you to come along! You can get all the details here, and sign up here.

Two: Tomorrow is UK Small Business Saturday. Please support small businesses by giving them some of your Christmas shopping custom! Related: I have a small business. I am also having a pre-Christmas sale right now!

Three: I am reposting this Danez Smith poem, because it is important. Really important.

OK, here’s the rest…

If the rhythm of your prose is broken, read poetry.

…and nine other very smart pieces of advice from Hilary Mantel.

Hey! The great Ryan Van Winkle is teaching an online poetry course and it looks great!

Bad reasons to start writing poetry. (Wait, there are good reasons?)

Sometimes I’ll literally turn my face away from the keyboard as I type, trying to access my unconscious a little more. Like if I don’t look, I can fool it into coming out of its cave.

Kim Addonizio is still the best.

Scottish Book Trust has called for every child in Scotland to have a library card. Proud to be a SBT staff member!

Looking for somewhere to submit your short fiction? Look no further.

Paddington stows away and deliberately avoids the immigration authorities on arrival. He is in formal legal terms an illegal entrant and as such commits a criminal offence under section 24 of the Immigration Act 1971. It is an offence punishable by up to six months in prison. If or when detected by the authorities it is more likely he would simply be removed back to Peru than that he would be prosecuted, though.

Paddington Bear: illegal entrant. Read this, it is important.

Did you write a love letter to a library for Book Week Scotland? You still can!

This is a lovely tribute to the great writer and activist Leslie Feinberg… and here is another one.

Yes, more people will buy the new Coldplay album than will read Kathleen Jamie’s next collection. Yes, poetry will remain a passion for a relatively small portion of the population. I also know that poetry is the great survivor, the Keith Richards of the arts. It was there at the dawn of civilisation – it has to be a toss-up between poetry, music or painting for what was the first art form early man took up – and it will be there at the end. When there are only a few humans left sitting around a campfire, they will amuse themselves with rhymes and word games, for poetry only needs a voice, not even a pen and piece of paper. I find this apocalyptic vision weirdly comforting.

Here’s Be The First To Like This editor Colin Waters saying very smart things.

Really weird ways to promote your book.

Bim Adewunmi’s Crush Of The Week is Quvenzhane Wallis, because she is basically the best human.

When black people are protesting in Ferguson and across America, they’re not protesting against white people. Maybe this seems obvious, but it’s worth stating. In fact, in the case of Ferguson, the protests weren’t (primarily) about one white cop. Black communities are ultimately protesting systems of injustice and inequality that structurally help white people while systematically harming black people. Just because you’re white and therefore generally benefit from those systems doesn’t mean you inherently support those systems — or need to defend them.

Because some people need to have the obvious stated at them in order to understand Ferguson.

The body acceptance community is still too focussed on “pretty.” < -- this is really great.

Movie posters made better by Mark Kermode quotes is also rather excellent.