The year's Writing and Reading

Writing

At the start of 2009 I realised that 3 lifetime publication milestones were within reach - 150 poems, 50 pieces of prose, 1000 pounds. I've been writing a while so these figures are no more than one should expect (rather less, in fact). In the end I only reached the money target. Last year I placed 4 stories, this year none, and yet I think I've written 3 good stories this year and 2 good shorts - twice my usual output. I've only written 2 publishable poems. With my kind of writing an idea can end up as a poem or a paragraph in a story, and prose has had first refusal this year. But I suppose it's early days yet - stories can take a while to get accepted.

Reading

Magazines - I subscribe (or am about to subscribe) to Acumen, Assent, Dark Horse, Iota, Other Poetry, Rialto, Smiths Knoll, Sphinx, Staple, Tears in the Fence, and Weyfarers. I read some other mags irregularly - I especially liked "All downhill from here", a story by Guy Ware in London Magazine, Aug/Sept 2009

Poetry - I read no poetry books between 20/10/08 and 8/5/09. Of the 12 I read in 2009 my favorites were "The Men from Praga", (Anne Berkeley) and "The Striped World" (Emma Jones)

Short Stories - Of the 9 collections I read I most liked "Broken Things" (Padrika Tarrant), "Assorted Fire Events" (David Means), and "Stories of your other life" (Ted Chiang).

Novels - I started reading 12, finished 10. I liked "la solitudine dei numeri primi" (Paolo Giordano), "White Noise" (Don DeLillo), and "Day" (A.L. Kennedy)