Episode 1256: New Eunoia Review Record!

Just spent a few hours in Varsity with coursemates, reading and talking about poetry, and generally just hanging out. Got my marks back today as well for both of last term's modules. Quite happy with the mark and comments for my EN973 essay, as I feel like they're really perceptive in terms of identifying the strengths of the essay (close reading) and where it could still do with improvement (integrating different theoretical perspectives). Less pleased with the EN978 portfolio mark, even if it's still decent. I just feel like I was being marked down for failing to do something with my story that I wasn't exactly trying to in the first place anyway. It's also further confirmation that just maybe, in future I should stick to writing poetry rather than fiction, since my grades throughout four years for anything fiction-related have been consistently and appreciably worse than those for my poetry stuff. Otherwise though, March is off to a good start! New daily record set at Eunoia Review for site visits, finally crossing the 300 mark. I have a hunch it's because Ben Parker, whose poems just went up on the site, is either very good at publicising his work or a lot of people are actively seeking out his work via search engines. It's too early to say if this spike in traffic will convert itself into a sustained significant increase in readership, although I'm hoping it will, however small the increase. I live in hope! Recent acceptances also take the buffer of queued posts up to 3.5 months.

Episode 1255: At Last, Essay Mark...

Mourning Diary has probably arrived at the Post Room, but annoyingly, the slip for collecting it hasn't turned up in the mailbox yet. I hope it shows up by tomorrow, or the whole point of ordering it would have been defeated. On the bright side, mere hours after I complained to Tory about us not getting back essay marks for last term's modules, a tutor e-mailed us individually to let us know our marks and comments sheets were ready for collection. I swear the universe is just reading my mind! Spent some time in the Library today catching up on submissions for The Cadaverine and The Conium Review, interrupted by coffee and chat with Claire Trévien, mostly about TV shows. I've finished going through this week's submissions for The Conium Review, and I got through a few more for The Cadaverine, before getting sucked into another mini-round of bizarre e-mails with a would-be contributor. Seriously, I think I should start collecting these odd e-mails, anonymise them and make a blog. Anyway, I've got another review up on Sabotage Reviews today. I'm a bit of a reviewing machine, as Claire put it, and I've sort of told Jane that I'll do one for Epicentre Magazine as well. If anyone would be up for reviewing or submitting poetry for that, by the way, get in touch. I've been given the go-ahead to commission reviews and solicit poems! So if any of my writer friends actually read this blog, consider yourself informed, although I'll send a proper e-mail/Facebook message out to specific people I have in mind when I'm a bit more organised, probably over the weekend.

Episode 1254: Support Cipher Prime!

Managed to get my review done before cell, and even had time to read a submission for The Cadaverine. Have a new batch in from The Conium Review too, so I've got to step up my reading speed. I also found time to read about half of Roland Barthes's Mourning Diary in the afternoon, and I was going to leave the rest for tomorrow, but now I'm thinking that I should just press on and finish the whole thing tonight. After I watch the new episode of Pretty Little Liars, of course. (Watching The Lying Game now, still loving Allie Gonino's band The Good Mad on it!) Incidentally, I got a newsletter today from Cipher Prime, announcing that they're doing fundraising to make a sequel to Auditorium, the game that first brought this game studio to my attention. Every game they've made - Auditorium, Fractal and Pulse - has been intelligent and beautifully put together, so I think they're worth backing. The Kickstarter page is here, and I've already pledged US$50, largely to get the special Supporter Edition of the game for bragging rights in the future. (Doubt many people I know would even care. Haha!)

Episode 1253: Lots Of Reviewing Going On Here...

First up, here's my review of Evelyn Posamentier's Poland At The Door, another chapbook from The Knives Forks and Spoons Press. So now that's only two more chapbook reviews I owe from last year! Speaking of which, I just got approached to do a review of the first title put out by the intriguingly named Wormwood Chapbooks. That title's actually sound out, but I understand that a second print run is on the cards, along with more forthcoming titles. Wish I'd heard of them sooner, as they're currently closed to submissions. The press is affiliated with A Few Lines Magazine, which I know of because I've published a poem from one of the editors before. (He's the one who approached me about the review.) Took a cheeky afternoon nap because I only got two hours of sleep last night, and now I'm debating whether I should stay up until I finish writing this review for Sabotage Reviews that's due in by Wednesday. I suppose I could, as I'm only aiming for 500 words, 600 maximum, since it's a review of a pretty straightforward but highly entertaining instalment of a pulp fiction serial. Also took on another book review for The Cadaverine, of Shalom Auslander's Hope: A Tragedy, which the author's website describes as 'a hilarious and haunting examination of the burdens and abuse of history, propelled with unstoppable rhythm and filled with existential musings and mordant wit. It is a comic and compelling story of the hopeless longing to be free of those pasts which haunt our every present.' Works for me!

Episode 1252: Melancholia

Bought a bunch of pamphlets today from the Salt Modern Voices series, as well as John McCullough's The Frost Fairs. I've heard particularly good things about the latter, and I was feeling mildly guilty that we're Facebook friends but I've yet to read his collection. Let's hope The Book Depository doesn't screw this order up! I went to see Melancholia at the WSC after service, and I wouldn't say the film was a complete waste of time. I'm glad that critical consensus about the film hasn't consisted of unadulterated praise, since I thought that the film, while undeniably a gorgeous work of art, is not without its flaws. Like the tedium of the first part, when the wedding party seemed to drag on forever, so that by the time I got to the second part of the film, I kind of just wanted it to all be over already. The camera work also really annoyed me because of how shots kept going in and out of focus, but hey, Lars von Trier has the right to shoot his films how he wants, just like I have the right to complain about it. What I found most intriguing about Melancholia on the whole was the casting, to be honest. Charlotte Gainsbourg didn't surprise me, since she was in his previous film Antichrist. I did like father-and-son duo Stellan and Alexander Skarsgård being in the film, but who truly surprised me was Kirsten Dunst. I can completely see why she received the Best Actress Award for this at Cannes, since for someone who quite possibly is still better known for her role in the Spider-Man trilogy, Melancholia feels like a really meaty role in comparison. Of course, she's played critically acclaimed roles in the past, like in The Virgin Suicides. Can't believe she's only 29! I was also mildly puzzled to find Kiefer Sutherland in this film. I've never seen 24, although I did enjoy the pilot of his new show Touch, but it was just weird seeing someone who's been associated with a TV role for a decade playing someone entirely different in a film.

Episode 1251: What I Said Yesterday, Basically

Have finished going through all the Epicentre Magazine poetry submissions, and I'll start on the fiction ones for The Cadaverine tomorrow if my headache goes away. I expect it will, since I'm mostly recovered from my cold, and it's just a lingering cough I've got now. Decided to go to the Post Room today as a form of procrastination from reading submissions, and it turned out to be a good decision because I was not only able to pick up the Cavafy hardback that I'm returning, my copy of Embassytown from The Book Depository was also available to be collected! Might start reading that next, after I finish The Boy With The Cuckoo-Clock Heart tonight. Oddly though, it looks like this is the original copy I ordered, rather than the replacement that was dispatched when I complained about the original order not having arrived. Will wait another month and see if another copy turns up! Figured I might as well do some more grocery shopping while I was out of my room, and I randomly decided to buy some hot cross buns. So maybe for the next couple of days, I'll break my rule of not eating breakfast.

Episode 1250: Still Sick, But I've Cracked On With Reading Submissions Anyway

Spent the afternoon after my seminar continuing to catch up on TV, just vegetating because of the cold that's still not gone away entirely. Don't think I'm going to rally enough for any sort of social activity by tomorrow evening, so both the FORM fundraiser and the Leamington house party are out of the question and I don't have to make a choice as to which one I want to go to more. Instead, I'm going to sit in front of my laptop and read the other half of the Epicentre Magazine submissions that I didn't get through tonight after catching up with all my TV shows. My parents would be proud of my self-discipline! Hasn't been as hard as I thought it would to decide whether to accept or reject, although there was a surprise from someone I'd published in Eunoia Review whose submission this time was quite, well, boring. Speaking of which, I've just checked the Eunoia Review inbox, and I've got four submissions waiting for me, so I should be cracking on with those now. I've got a list ranking to maintain. Haha! I think the journal's currently back at the top on Duotrope's Digest for swiftest responses for both poetry and fiction. It's never fallen out of the top three since it started getting listed anyway. It's also now firmly in the bottom half of the Top 25 for approachability, although it'd probably have fallen off that list by now, if the true acceptance/rejection ratio for the journal were being tracked, rather than going by user reports. I've toyed with the idea of working it out myself, since I've still got all the submissions in the inbox, but that's just a waste of time to uncover a statistic that few people apart from myself could be expected to care about.

Episode 1249: Everyone, Check Out Opaque Nature!

Just got back from the Opaque Nature album launch at Taylor John's House. The band were really, really good, so definitely check out their Bandcamp page, have a listen, and get the album if you like what you hear. Was a truly excellent way to end a day that actually got off to a really bad start. Woke up around 5 am and couldn't fall asleep again for an hour or so because of my cold. When I eventually did, I proceeded to sleep through my alarm, waking up about half an hour before I was supposed to be in S2.82 doing a DR@W experiment. Good thing I managed to show up though, since I made £18! Also managed to get to a Collect+ shop on my way to the city centre, so that book is finally on its way back to Amazon UK. Then had a lot of time to kill before the band were due to be playing, so I just randomly stepped into the Belgrade and sat down for a while, which I figured would be safer than wandering through the streets by myself. There's some productions that look interesting, including a run of Equus, so I might check if there are free tickets going for under-26s. Might as well make use of my youth while I still can! First issue of The Conium Review also arrived in the post today, and it's a weird feeling to see myself being thanked in print for making the magazine's publication possible. Glad to be part of a publication that's invested in doing print issues though. It's a nice change, since all the other projects I'm involved in are online-only.

Episode 1248: Sniffles

Apparently, the undergraduate secretary in my department thinks that I'm a member of the teaching staff, as I got an e-mail reminder today about getting my students to do module evaluations. Couldn't decide if I should reply to the e-mail jokingly, or just ignore it. Anyway, my plan to start working my way through submissions today has been scuppered by my cold. So instead, I've been watching lots of TV. Gossip Girl this week was actually okay! I'm glad the Dan/Blair pairing is being given some mileage, since it was pretty much the only remaining heterosexual relationship among the main cast that had gone unexplored so far. (I must say, it's also pretty impressive that Rufus and Lily haven't been carted off the show, unlike all the parental figures on 90210, which has always clearly been the West Coast counterpart to Gossip Girl.) Also managed to have an awesome haircut. Usually my hair looks quite weird right after I cut it, but it's perfect this time, which leads me to believe that I've been cropping it too short all this time that I've been using the salon on campus. Meeting with my supervisor after that went well, I think, although he's still all for my interviewing the poets in the anthology and doesn't get why I don't share his enthusiasm for that idea. We'll see! Getting to interview Edwin Thumboo would be a coup, that's for sure, even if I'm not sure why he'd accept my request. At least my supervisor supports my decision to entirely abandon postcolonial studies as the basis for my argument, even though it's one of his research interests. I still feel like I need to address it though, if only to state why I'm rejecting it as a framework, and he thinks the way to do that is to set out my case in the introduction, in order to explain why I think the concepts of floating signifiers and liminality are for me a more productive way of reading the poems.

Episode 1247: Pancake Day!

Went to cell for the first time this year even though I'm definitely developing a cold. There were pancakes though, as it's Shrove Tuesday aka Pancake Day. Might be the first time I've actually had pancakes on Pancake Day while in the UK! Despite feeling ill, I managed to get all my reading for Thursday's seminar done, and I've started reading the Arendt essay for Friday. It's all part of a resolution we made while in the pub last Friday to speak up more in the seminar! I usually just don't say anything for the same reasons as all the way back in JC. It sounds horribly conceited, but I just tend not to speak unless I'm fairly sure what I have to say is going to advance the discussion in some way. That and I prefer listening and thinking to speaking off-the-cuff, which is sometimes what can happen in a seminar and then you get really banal things being said for the sake of filling the silence. In more pressing news, NBC has finally come to their senses and returned Community to their schedule, starting from March 15. It's about time too! That's also the date that The Vampire Diaries returns with new episodes, so I can finally get back to my brilliant Friday TV combo.