Jesmond Library nestles in a comfortable suburb of Newcastle but its life has been far from slippers-and-a-cup-of-cocoa lately. Ten years ago the council stopped funding it, and it’s been run by a huge band of committed and energetic volunteers ever since. There’s loads going on here, including an annual creative writing competition, which I entered this year. The theme was light and I put in an odd story I’m rather fond of and a poem I was much less sure about – and the poem won third prize! Here I am with fellow winners and our certificates and prize notebooks (It is a truth universally acknowledged by writers that you can never have Too Many Notebooks.)
I also entered the Trio Uganda poetry competition this year. Founded in 2017, Trio Uganda is a volunteer-led micro charity with no paid staff in the UK and minimal overheads. It works in various parts of Uganda to the principles of Asset Based Community Development, often with partner organisations, to support sustainable projects that lift people out of poverty, and the poetry competition is one of its fundraising activities. You might know that I have a very personal relationship with Uganda. I went there in 2019; it’s the only African country I’ve visited, and it was never on my bucket list but that trip continues to challenge the way I think about almost everything – one day there will be writing about it! I submitted three of my poems inspired by teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, and amid (or more accurately slightly beneath) a company of wonderful poets, my work got an honourable mention from the judge.
I love my ESOL poems and am working them up into a collection. Many of them are not finished yet, but still being worked and reworked, and some are yet to be written, but it’s exciting to see them noticed and praised. I’ve entered them several places, and sometimes they do well while sometimes they go unnoticed. Here’s the link to the competition on the website; https://www.triouganda.org/poetry-competition
Meanwhile, the sky poem, as I said, I remain unsure about. I’ve got a few poems inspired by looking at the sky, and this is one of the less worked-through but it fitted the theme of the competition. I think it’s important for me both to do my best and not to be too precious about it. The truth is, if I waited until a poem was perfect before submitting it, not only would I never submit because nothing is ever perfect, but also I would be devastated when it didn’t win. And not winning is part of the writing process. I’ve spent the last few years learning how to develop a thick skin about it without losing hope, and the solution I’ve found is to avoid a zero-sum mindset. I tell myself, when my work is rejected, that it might be not because it’s not good enough, but because other people’s was also good enough. You very rarely get feedback to you might as well make up something encouraging like this! And it works. Without that mindset I probably wouldn’t have subbed to either competition.
Submitting, to journals and competitions, is a vital part of the process for me. It keeps me brave, it keeps me reaching for my best and it keeps me in the conversations, and being in the conversations, I think, is the truest reason why I write.