New Directions and Big Decisions

This collection that I am working on is becoming increasingly problematic - not so much because of its themes or even the ordering of the poems - but because it is simply too big - and to make matters worse I can't stop writing. I have culled it by about half already and it is still at 90 plus A4 pages. I know I shouldn't moan - most people I have spoken to have pointed out that this is surely a good problem to have, and in some ways they are right. I am beginning to wonder whether I should pull one of the threads out (hoping, of course, that the whole thing doesn't unravel like an old jumper) and make it the back bone of another book.

To do that feels rather scary. For one thing most writers want to put their best stuff in their collections - why wouldn't you? For another thing there is no guarantee that I will even have a third collection published. I am lucky to have a second - and if the second is not well received I may not get another chance. The things I am writing now feel risky, and at the same time I am finding it incredibly exciting. Things that I am doing with my Arts Council funding (like the research trip to London) seem to be really bearing fruit and taking my ideas in new directions. The new stuff feels more rooted in the physical and less in the landscape of personal history - this in itself I find intriguing as I went to London to look more at my 'personal history' and while I did do that I found myself more moved by the physicality of the places I visited than any past connections. I would like to spend more time visiting there to see what more will come.