Today, I’m celebrating everything good about poetry!
I am grateful to all the poets whose poems have sustained and delighted me over the years.
I am grateful to all the poets who have offered friendship, inspiration and affirmation, encouraging me to keep going with my writing. Thank you!
Writing can be a lonely journey, at times, but it seems to me that the journey is happier and more fulfilling if we support each other.
On January 1st 2020, poet John McCullough tweeted a lovely message about my poem, ‘January’, that he had previously selected for the Frogmore Prize. He said: ‘I posted a while back about the importance of learning how to use silence in poetry as well as sound. I think this poem … is a great example. There’s so much quietly going on in the stanza breaks, the line breaks and that white silence at the end.’
Thank you, John! Your appreciation of my poem was a lovely gift, helping to inspire confidence. Later in 2020 my short poetry collection ‘January’ was published by Maytree Press. Thank you, Maytree!
Sarah Barr 