Category: Poetry

Writing Roundup 2025 (with a new publishing history)

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Cor, 2025 was a year. If I thought 2024 was the year of change, upheaval and new beginnings, 2025 has, without a doubt, said hold my beer. This isn’t the place I’ll be going into details about it, but I will say that all the change hasn’t (yet) affected my writing, and that’s what you’re here to read about, right? Write. From a writing POV, it’s been a flipping good year. Let me tell you about it. Let the 2025 writing roundup begin!

Pursuing Publication, a tragicomedy in five acts

I wrote my best gothic novel (imo), The House on Abaddon Square, back in 2021. Since then, the rejection letters have piled up. I vented about this in a poem called Another Slip for the Spike but, actually, it’s not all bad. I’ve had full manuscript requests and actual feedback from agents, which is more than many aspiring authors get. Sadly though, 2025 wasn’t the year to final get Abaddon Square over the line.

Back in March, I decided to switch focus. I write a lot of short stories and poems and, for the most part, they sit on my hard drive, edited and polished but stored away. Imagine a Raiders of the Lost Ark style warehouse full of literary flotsam and jetsam. Perhaps, mused I, these pieces deserve a shot at being read by someone other than me. I made myself a spreadsheet, researched journals and anthologies and competitions, and got submitting. And what do you know: I hooked some success!

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The Dragon and the Cross: A St. George’s Day Poem

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A couple of years ago, I started writing a St. George’s Day poem. I had this idea, see — well, more of an image, in my head. I’d seen a billboard with an England fan’s face on it. White greasepaint, red cross, as solemn as if his life depended on the match. Who knows, maybe it did. I don’t have much truck for football myself, but it did spark an idea in me. Rather than St. George a chivalrous knight, why not St. George a berserker, a raging, painted warrior fighting for his faith against his hellish opponent? I could write about that.

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New Atlantis: A Poem

Liam Smith 2 Comments

I hang my head in shame. It has been more than six months since I’ve put finger to key and clacked a new blog post into being. More than six months since sharing a story, poem, or even a trademark thought or reflection. Well, it ends today. I’ve a new poem to share with you, and a little tale to go with it. Patient readers, I present for your pleasure: New Atlantis.

2022: Good for babies, disastrous for writing

You might recall my last blog post. I described the recent changes I’d made in life: I was immersed in teacher training and expecting a baby in January. Well, I’m now a teacher and, even more importantly, a father. Tristan Smith was born on 12th January 2022, and he’s as perfect a baby as we could hope for. Yes: even when he cries all day. I loved that crying when I was trying to complete my final assessment for my PGCE. Loved it. Hmm.

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Get Rhythm: How to Write in Poetic Meter

Liam Smith 1 Comment
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary…

Ever wondered why some poetry sounds so good when you speak it out loud? How it contains its own rhythm that you can’t help but fall into? There’s a word for that. Poetic meter*.

This article started life as an essay on meter and how to write in it. But seeing as I got bored writing it, I figure it wouldn’t have enticed my readers to stick around reading it. And I am married to a web analyst who notices things like my website’s performance. So we’re going to try something snappier; more fun and more visual.

iambic pentameter diagram explaining rhythm Read More

Pre-Meditated Poetry vs. Writing Poetry of Passion

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So how’s everyone doing in quarantine? Run out of films to watch or books to read? Eaten a housemate? No, of course things aren’t that bad yet. Netflix is infinite, books are plentiful, and your housemate won’t fit in your oven. But, there is plenty of time for catching up on tasks around the house. Plenty of time for writing. Plenty of time to pay some attention to my neglected blog – and perhaps for writing poetry…

I do poetry quite regularly now. Not instead of prose; that still gets its 5000 words a week (occasionally I even send work off to agents or competitions; I just don’t advertise the fact). Performing poetry means a lot of my media posts now are about poetry, especially since I’ve got some poetry friends to tweet and twitter with. Also, pictures of me on a stage gesticulating by a microphone make for better Tweets than wrote more words today:

Chatting with other poets, I’ve come to realise that my poetry-writing process might be a bit different to the norm – though not, I suspect, different to the process of a prose writer. You see, at the poetry nights I go to, most poets have fresh material every month: new bits of verse about things they’ve done or seen, or feelings they’ve had. I will listen, sifting through my Kindle for anything I might not have read out yet, coming up short. I think my poems might have a longer gestation period than others.

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