Congratulations - your poem is in our anthology!
This blog is written by Helen Kay, the poet we chose to publish, out of all the winners of the Bournemouth Writing Festival Poetry and Flash Fiction Competition 2024, Lines in the Sand. Helen has chosen to share with us her experience of winning and how positivity can have a snowball effect …
When poets wake up, there is always a hope of good news in the form of poetic success. At any stage of your career, there is no greater pleasure than being picked to feature in an anthology. Amidst hospital appointments, junk mail, scams and bills, that word “Congratulations” pounces, and somehow even the subsequent washing up seems full of sparkling bubbles.
After the ego-boosting pleasure of acceptance comes the excitement of receiving your complimentary copy in the post. A delicious afternoon ensues, reading the offerings of others on a given theme, discovering new talents alongside familiar names, feeling part of a community.
But sometimes an anthology is a wardrobe hole to even more delights – events online, the joy of face-to-face gatherings, reviews, ratings, even award nominations. When I sent off a little poem about Hilbre Island on its long voyage to the Bournemouth Writing Festival, I had no idea where it would take me….
Though I live many miles from Bournemouth, good luck enabled me to buy a cheap train ticket and to combine the launch with visiting friends. But this was no typical launch, where we read our poems politely as schoolkids at a prizegiving. Instead, we watched a series of deeply moving songs and spoken word pieces by, and about, marginalised voices. This was my kind of festival – diverse and inclusive. The launch also led me to discover a wonderful seaside town. The train-ride home was packed with ideas.
And there’s more. Appearance in the anthology offered an opportunity to enter a competition for having a pamphlet published by a press called Dithering Chaps – what a cool name. Further emails saying congratulations appeared, first a shortlist, then unbelievably the winner. OMG.
With that win comes a cornucopia of experiences, not least writing a blog. Before today I had hardly ever read blogs, let alone written one. Now here I am, a blagging blogger, all because my offering caught the editor’s eye. There could be a moral in this, but the washing up awaits – and boy, how those bubbles sparkle!
Helen Kay