The poetry has been a little slow in coming since I finished my chapbook SKID-ROAD BALLADS AND UNION SONGS. (Well, I say "finished", but there's still a little editing to do.)
You always feel a bit deflated when you wind a project up. And I have become really chickenshit about sending work out, too, so I prevaricate about that until even I have lost interest in trying to sell the poem or book in question.
Why have I become chickenshit? I don't know. Rejection is an occupational hazard for the poet. Fearing it is a bit like being a boxer and objecting to being punched. But I do fear it. If I get three or four rejections in a row it can stop me writing for six months.
And yet it bugs me watching all these other poets--some better than me, some nowhere near as good--advancing in their careers (for the want of a better word), getting books and readings when I couldn't even start a fight in a petrol station.
I need to toughen up again. Start pushing this shit of mine into other people's hands and insisting they read it.
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