Writing themes, blogs and The Beatles.

I haven’t posted for a while and here’s what I’ve been up to…

I put together 24 poems for a pamphlet competition and it took a lot of time, deciding which poems seemed good enough and which fitted the theme.  Yes, a theme.  I looked again at the poems I’ve written over the last four years – about 40 poems in all – and my big discovery was that, in the main, three topics dominated: Remembering, Sex and Death.  So, for the pamphlet comp, I assembled 24 ‘remembering’ poems.  When I have more energy, I’ll see if I can take on Sex and Death.  Strictly speaking I didn’t need to theme the pamphlet but it felt right to assemble poems which seem to relate to each other, however tenuously.  Let’s see what happens.
 
I’ve also been spending time and love on my poetry blog, And Other Poems, reading work that’s been sent in, emailing contributors, formatting the poems and adding links.  I love my poetry blog, there are many delights in discovering poets whose work I’m unfamiliar with, as well as making connections with poets whose work I’ve long admired, but the blog has become more and more time-consuming, leaving me less hours for my own writing which really does need attention.  So I’ve made the decision to post less on And Other Poems, just twice a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays.  I think it’s often enough and I hope that readers will still enjoy popping in to read the poems – there’s some fantastic work coming up in May and June.
 
And in OTHER news, I spent a few days in Liverpool and Southport with my husband and two children. I was born in Southport and lived there till I was twelve so it was fun to show my children, now 12 and 13, the four or five streets surrounding my childhood home which were my whole world in the early part of my life. I was so pleased that they met some of our lovely relations, too. We also thoroughly enjoyed visiting The Beatles Story, which tells the story of Liverpool’s famous band. Here’s a postcard of the Fab Four
 

 
I’ve managed to cover quite a few areas in this post! Have any themes emerged in your writing, recently? Do you run a poetry blog yourself and, if you do, how do you manage your time? And what about The Beatles? Any anecdotes to share? All responses welcome!