How does your work first enter the world? Do you have a social group or writers group that you work ideas and poems with?
I belong to several poetry groups: Red Door Poets, the Crocodile Collective, the Covent Garden Stanza group, a Faber group and the Canada Water group. I believe community is vital to poetry. I also have a couple of people I 'swap' poems with monthly. I find these platforms the perfect testing ground for my poems. Sometimes the hardest part can be working out what to do with feedback. Time is usually the best solution, and reading the poem aloud. Getting a good mentor can also be a brilliant way forward, especially if you want to challenge your writing.
To enter my poems into the world more generally I submit to magazines and competitions. The qualities required for this are quite different, competitive rather than creative, requiring a highly organised, disciplined approach and a robust attitude to rejections. Often I have to force myself, but it is very satisfying once done.
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