mslexia - for women who write

New Writing: 2013 Women's Poetry Competition 

Kathleen Jamie introduces her selection of winning poems

"It’s always difficult being faced with a heap of poems, all in different fonts, with different margins, and code numbers handwritten in the corner. I prefer approaching poems one at a time, as you would if you encountered them in a book; then each poem can take its time, find its own level. That’s why proper book-making is so important for poetry, because it situates poems with care and attention on the page, and why internet publishing is a poor option."

 https://www.mslexia.co.uk

Kathleen Jamie: a life in writing

"When we step outside and look up, we're not little cogs in the capitalist machine. It's the simplest act of resistance and renewal."

http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2012/apr/06/kathleen-jamie-life-in-writing 

"A New Earth" Eckhart Tolle

"I have also met many others who may be technically good at what they do but whose ego constantly sabotages their work. Only part of their attention is on the work they perform; the other part is on themselves. Their ego demands personal recognition and wastes energy in resentment if it doesn't get enough - and it's never enough. 'Is someone else getting more recognition than me?' Or their main focus of attention is profit or power, and ther work is no more than a means to that end. When work is no more than a means to an end, it cannot be of high quality. When obstacles or difficulties arise in their work, when things don't go according to expectation, when other people or circumstances are not helpful or cooperative, instead of immediately becoming one with the new situation and responding to the requirements of the present moment, they react against the situation and so separate themselves from it. There is a 'me' that feels personally offended or resentful, and a huge amount of energy is burned up in useless protest or anger, energy that could be used for solving the situation if it were not being misused by the ego. What is more, this 'anti'-energy creates new obstacles, new opposition. Many people are truly their own worst enemy.

People unknowingly sabotage their own work when they withhold help or information from others or try to undermine them lest they become more successful or get more credit than 'me'. Cooperation is alien to the ego, except when there is a secondary motive. The ego doesn't know that the more you include others, the more smoothly things flow and the more easily things come to you. When you give little or no help to others or put obstacles in their path, the universe - in the form of people and circumstances - gives little or no help to you because you have cut yourself off from the whole. The ego's unconscious core feeling of 'not enough' causes it to react to someone else's success as if that success had taken something away from 'me'. It doesn't know that your resentment of another person's success curtails your own chances of success. In order to attract success, you need to welcome it wherever you see it. "

http://www.eckharttolle.com/

Emily Riall

"We often talk approvingly about young writers who ‘find their voice early’, without actually saying what we mean by it. Emily’s poems are a triumphant case study of that process in action.

First of all, she had found her subject. Most of what you will read in A Sinkful of Sky concerns the territory of mental illness. Without demeaning the seriousness of that topic, I would however say her real subject is the gaps between people, their silences and hesitations and the limiting effect of language on communication. Far from overwhelming her, she tackled these themes with great vigour and daring.
Secondly, Emily’s poems are minor miracles of precision. There isn’t a poem in her book which does not know when to stop. She seemed to have learned at a very early age that good poems trust their reader, providing them with information, yes, but also with space. Some writers can take years to learn this, but Emily apprehended it young, with laser-like self-knowledge."

Anthony Wilson,  September 15, 2013
http://anthonywilsonpoetry.com/2013/09/15/lifesaving-poems-emily-rialls-duty-psychiatrist/