Episode 843: On The Right Track!

Had two seminars in a day where I'd gladly have listened to the seminar tutors talk far longer than they already did. First was China Miéville in the morning, and there's nothing much more to say about that than that he was incredible as always. (I suppose Dambudzo Marechera was as well.) Insert minor fanboy moment here. That tattoo he's got on his right bicep freaks me out though. I'm pretty sure it wasn't there before Kraken came out. (Randomly, Wikipedia has informed me that novel was published on my birthday last year.) Then it was Graeme Macdonald in the afternoon, whom I'd listen to (and this is a really shallow reason) just for his accent. Wasn't really that keen on Scottish poetry per se, apart from Edwin Morgan. The Australian stuff we're looking at next week is more my kind of thing, to be honest. In between these seminars, Michael Hulse pretty much made my day by letting me know that he thought my poems so far are on the right track. He had some pointers for revising them further if I was thinking of sending them off for publication and such, but if I didn't have the time for that, what I've got so far is fine for the purposes of my PWP. (Now I just need to turn out 23 pages more!) It's good, since my biggest worry so far has been not being able to get away from the stilted cadences that in retrospect I can see were plaguing the first drafts from before the Christmas vacation, so it seems I've finally managed to escape that sufficiently now.