so sure was i, that my poem wouldn’t be accepted by The incredible Moth Magazine, i didn’t bother even to make a note on the document i keep to remind me of my submissions. imagine my surprise when they wrote back saying they’d publish my poem, ‘IF YOU CAME TAPPING AT THE WINDOW’!  It’s both an honour and a shock (!) to have this poem included in such a fine magazine.

the poem talks about the things that went through my mind the first night i went to bed after my father died.

here’s a link to the current (spring 2018) edition of The Moth where the poem (among many other stunning work) appears. i hope you’ll buy a copy at some stage & support these incredible people running this beautiful magazine.  

http://www.themothmagazine.com

https://t.co/sAA4yFE7An

— ali whitelock (@ali_whitelock) March 1, 2018

when you’re trying to record a poem.

so it’s my birthday, my partner thomas gets off the train and hands me this coffin shaped bag.  

so it rained all day & i was stuck at home so i made this youtube clip of me reading my poem ‘water’s for fish’ –– from my forthcoming collection, ‘and my heart crumples like a coke can.’  it can take quite some time to record a poem. firstly, there are the coughs, the frogs that appear unexpectedly in your throat, then you get to the last line and the cat walks into the room meowing, then the phone rings mid-line (cause you forgot to turn it off), then the neighbour starts to mow his lawn & don’t start me on the guy two doors up with his leaf blower. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cu6UR4hmD4Y&t=2s

Yay! my 2 poems, 'ODE TO AN OVARY' and 'EVENTUALLY YOU WILL TURN FIFTY' published @BeLoMAG #poetry https://t.co/DIa5PGb2Hs pic.twitter.com/h8nShWyp8E

— ali whitelock (@ali_whitelock) February 2, 2018

my poems ‘ode to an ovary’ & ‘eventually you will turn fifty’ were published this month at Beautiful Losers Mag. wow. so honoured. huge thanks to those guys. 

i miss the days of the video shop. i miss the nerdy guy behind the counter recommending black & white Czechoslovakian documentaries, intellectual french indies, low budget arthouse movies for the buffs amongst us. i miss a human handing me a movie, me putting it in my bag, me taking it home, and putting it in my machine and watching it. in this age of iTunes and downloads and me unable to retain the thousand passwords and IDs it seems to take just to fucking exist these days, it’s been a long while since i watched a movie. then i heard about this movie called, ‘where you’re meant to be’ with aidan moffat and sheila stewart. rather than tear my hair out in great clumps trying to download it from iTunes UK cause it’s unavailable on iTunes australia, i ended up ordering an actual DVD from the UK and had it posted to me. it took weeks to arrive. it was worth the wait. see it.  it is hair-standing-on-end-tinglingly good. here’s the trailer:

i now have the rather posh title of ‘poetry convenor’ at the brand new poetry open mic @ ‘sydney poetry lounge’!  our first night will be on 3rd April 2018 at The Friend in Hand pub at 58 Cowper Street, Glebe then every first tuesday of the month going forward! open mic sign up from 6.30pm. 2 feature poets!  door donation $10/$5 unwaged. tell your friends!  everyone’s invited.  bring your poems, bring your hearts, bring your minds! 

So the Irish poetry readings which are going to set my world on fire and I’ll be doing with the incredible Anne Casey, Nathanael O’Reilly & Eleanor Hooker  are going to look like this:

21 June 2018 Dublin at Poetry Ireland (!)

29 June 2018 Over The Edge Writers Gathering, Galway

02 July 2018 The O’Bheal Reading Series, Cork

Pinching myself here, knowing I’ll be reading in poetry heart-land.

We will likely be scooting around in a car just like this:

Oh wowzy! Those lovely people at ‘Ink, Sweat & Tears’ have submitted my poem ‘the cumquats of christmas past’ into The Forward Prize for Best Single Poem 2018! Mammy daddy, am beside myself with excitement.  What could all this mean? Well, if I win that prize (!), that’d be awesome. If I don’t, it’ll still be awesome to have had my little poem considered & it’s just so cockle warming to know the people at ‘Ink Sweat & Tears’ loved my little cumquats enough to push them out into the big wide world.  The pic below isn’t actually of cumquats, but it’s the closest thing to cumquats i could find.