I have been blogging regularly for five years since September 2018. I once heard that on average most bloggers last two years before running out ideas. I have not run out of ideas – it is just that I want to spend my time writing more poems. My reserve of new works was depleted after those months spent judging a competition last year. I also want to focus on running a local workshop and getting my second collection published. So, this will be the last of my regular monthly blogs for a while.

In five years of blogging, I have covered many subjects relating to the writing of poetry, such as: inspiration for poems, craft techniques, metaphor, lyric aspects such as rhyming and prosody, metre and scansion, specific forms such as the sonnet, socialising your poetry in workshops and readings, and giving feedback and judging. I will still post when I have something to say that is interesting.

My second collection of poems is completed but it remains for me to find a suitable publisher. This blurb for this collection introduces it as follows:

“In this haunting collection, you are taken on a journey around the world’s wild places and urban spaces. Country-hopping between far-flung cities and UNESCO wildernesses, the settings of these poems circumnavigate the globe from Australia, France, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Nepal, the UK, and the USA, returning the reader to an English garden. You discover the relationships of people to Nature and each other, whether driven by poverty, ignorance, hubris, or avarice. Although these works speak of separation or alienation, the book concludes with an optimistic message”.

Forty percent of these poems have already been published individually in respected poetry magazines or literary journals. So, I feel it is an very engrossing and worthy collection. The task of finding a publisher is increasingly difficult these days because many small presses have ceased publishing in these difficult times.

Do not forget my first collection, which is still available:

The Thin Veneer, Clifford Liles, ISBN: 978-1-913329-81-5.  RRP £8.50, Dempsey&Windle, July 2022, 42 pages. Available from good bookshops, Amazon and

https://www.dempseyandwindle.com/cliffordliles

I also have new work appearing soon in Poetry Salzburg Review, South, and Obsessed with Pipework journals.

All the best in your writing.

Clifford Liles

March 2024