Bedford

John Bunyan wrote The Pilgrim's Progress while he was imprisoned in Bedford jail. I've not visited his museum yet.

The Panacea Society have a museum which I've not visited, though I've read about them - see their fascinating history.

Eagle bookshop has been open for years in Bedford without me realising. I shall visit it frequently in the future. It has many second hand books (including a useful poetry section), and a section about local - living! - writers, a shelf for each one. I think Ouse Muse poets meet there nowadays.

4 literary events in 4 days

Feb 28th - Matt Riches, Matthew Stewart et al at St. Albans.
Organised by Ver poets, which has included some famous members over the years. About 20 people watched the headliners (an experienced and excellent pairing) and 11 open-mic poets. It began at 11 a.m. which is a convenient time for some of us. It was free. The poets sold several books.

Mar 1st - Anne Berkeley et al at CB1, Cambridge.
I bought her latest book, "Object Permanence", there. About 40 people attended, paying £5, with a lively open-mic. At least 3 of the people were first-timers.

Mar 2nd - A.E. Stallings (The Oxford Professor of Poetry) at Trinity, Cambridge.
The first of a short series of free talks. This one was entitled: "The Spell of Rhyme". About 100 people attended. She looked at what rhyme does, at some types of rhyme, then at why some types (e.g. between different parts of speech, or between an abstract noun and a proper one) succeed better than others, using as examples works by Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and "The sunlight on the garden" by Louis MacNeice, etc. She doesn't think that English is short of rhyming words - compared to other languages there's more scope for rhyming verbs with nouns, etc.

Mar 3rd - Cambridge Writers short story prize results.
A hotly contested members-only annual event that I usually enter and rarely win. This year was no exception. 30 entries. Over 30 zoom and in-person attendees. Many excellent stories.

Street Poetry

This scene was outside King's College Cambridge yesterday. Typewriter at the ready, the poet offers the public a "Poem on the Spot". No AI.

Today I went to Huntingdon, about 30km from Cambridge. They have an alley of murals I didn't know about, featuring T.S. Eliot, William Cowper, Lucy Maria Boston, Henry of Huntingdon, George Herbert and Samuel Pepys.

Here's the Eliot wall. Little Gidding is about 15km from Huntingdon.

Rejections due

I've been busy sending off. In the post I have -

• Prose competition entries: 6. I spent about £20.
• Stories: 3
• Flash: 20
• Poems: 9
• Prose books: 1

Meanwhile, I've written 2 poems, 3 flashes and 2 stories this year so far. Doubt if I'll keep that pace up, but it's a start.

Dublin, 2026

It's been nearly a decade since I last visited Dublin. This time I stayed in the Temple Bar area, round the corner from a night club that's popular, by the sound of it.

I happened to be there on Joyce's birthday, Feb 2nd. Next to his statue there is now a portal showing a live webcam view of elsewhere, and v.v.. He has a bridge named after him, and quotes embedded in the pavement. I wouldn't bother with his poems. "Dubliners" feels heavy on the symbolism nowadays though well worth reading. "A Portrait of the artist as a young man" holds up well - I think it's the best place to start if you're new to him. "Ulysses" is required reading for any budding literary writer, though companion notes are necessary. It's easier to be impressed by the book than to love it. Parts of "Finnegan's wake" are worth listening to, but I wouldn't suggest reading it.

Other Dublin writers get mentions too around the city. Beckett has a bridge named after him. Bram Stoker has a presence. George Bernard Shaw's reputation has sunk fast though. I keep forgetting that he won a Nobel Prize.

Oscar Wilde features, and his house can be visited. Sean O'Casey has a theatre named after him. Yeats' Abbey Theatre is still going. Brendan Behan has a statue.

There's an Irish Writers' Centre. I visited the "Museum of Irish Literature" (MOLI) which opened in 2019 (the Writers' Museum has closed). There's a room on Romance and the crossover with LitFic - Sally Rooney. Maeve Binchy was born in Dalkey and lived in Dublin. Women's writing is getting more coverage. The word "pregnancy" was banned in literature until 1960 - "happy event" was used instead.

The jigsaw puzzle used recently in a jigsaw competition shows Ha'penny Bridge, which is close to the "Winding Stair" book shop. I also visited "The Last Bookshop", "Books Upstairs", and "Chapters". The older 2nd hand bookshops have shelves up to the ceiling and waist-high piles of books. I ended up buying "The Stinging Fly" (45.2, with Ilse Pedler in it), "The Granta Book of the Irish Short Story", "Arrows in Flight" (Irish Short Story anthology), "Pulse" (Irish Short Story anthology), and "The Machine Stops", an SF story by E.M. Forster - all 2nd hand or free.

I didn't meet any writers. Next time I'll try to, though the idea of a BYOB open-mic isn't tempting. Dublin seems a welcoming place for story writers.

We visited Bray (Joyce lived there), climbed Bray Head, and walked through Dalkey. We went to EPIC (The Irish Emigration Museum) where I found out that cheese and onion crisps were invented in Ireland, and drank in pubs with live Irish music. I'd forgotten about the Viking influence and the immensity of the potato famine effects.

The short story, 2025 - going down

Over on The Fort Wayne Review of Books there are some statistics on short story collections.

My guess is that more people read novels than write them. For poetry I think it's the other way round. Short stories have the worst of both worlds - like novels, few people write them and as with poems, few people read them.

The big publishers know this. In the USA, 2025, there were only 20 new English-language short story collections published in hardcover by the Big Five Publishers and their imprints. Only 4 of the authors were white men and they were all over 65. Of course there are paperbacks, translations, and smaller publishers, but all the same it's depressing.

And there's more bad news. Every year since 2004, the New York Times has published its list of 100 Notable Books. 12 short story collections were mentioned in 2008. The trend has been down ever since. None were mentioned in 2025.

Why get published?

On Lit Mag News (Substack), Barbara Krasner wrote about how she’d made an effort to get published in 2025. She sent 660 submissions. For poetry she got a 25% acceptance rate. For fiction she got an 8% acceptance rate. Overall she had 93 poems, 14 essays, 4 short stories, 11 flash fiction,and 2 flash nonfiction pieces accepted.

I can imagine this news items provoking several reactions among writers I know. Some might see Krasner's behaviour as an egotistic attempt to be famous. Why not write more instead of spending all that time sending things off? I belong to a writers group where many of the members enjoy writing and haven't tried to be published (often because they're writing novels). I can understand that point of view. The important thing for them is to enjoy what they do - the satisfaction of finding the right words to express what's inside. After all, joggers don't have to beat records (even their own ones) to enjoy their jogging.

However I can also see the other point of view -

• The late prose writer Angela Carter and the poet Don Paterson consider[ed] their work unfinished until it's published - it's a bit like talking to yourself. An actor or dancer wouldn't practise alone in their room unless there was a performance ahead. A composer works on pieces with the intention of being heard.
• People who wrote in Ivory Towers used to be considered suspect - often because of their seeming disregard for other people.
• If your work would give pleasure to others (or even help others), it's rather mean-spirited to keep it to yourself.
• It's rather presumptuous to think that you're a better judge of your work than others would be. You might think you're understanding yourself, putting valuable insights onto paper using just the right words, but suppose you're deluding yourself? Does it matter as long you're happy? Maybe not, but if the quality of your self-knowledge matters to you, maybe you should get a second opinion.
• Getting published (getting validation from peers) is an inspiration to write more.
• Krasner thinks that because of her publications she "found her community". The interaction between writer and reader isn't as immediate as at a workshop meeting, but when published writers meet (especially if they've been in the same publications) there's a sense of kinship even if they haven't read each other.