Pomegranate

Some of you (okay, okay, let's face it, only people I know read this, so, all of you) know that I am the webmistress (is there a gender-neutral term I can use? WEBMONARCH, maybe? No?) of the poetry ezine, http://www.pomegranate.me.uk. In case anyone I don't know has stumbled upon this blog (hi!) then I'll give a brief run-down: it's an online poetry journal for writers under 30, published quarterly. It's been running since last autumn.

Last night and this morning, I finished coding and uploading issue 3: time. The next issue's (optional, always stress the optional) theme is "Suck", which is a bit different and quite fun, I think. Anyway, the coding is... I'm not going to lie and say enjoyable or anything, but it wasn't hard - just a bit mundane, because I'm a bit obsessive and code by hand, which means a lot of manual tags for linebreaks. This issue is great, though - 20 poems, 5 articles, an interview and a great cover photo. It's always really exciting getting an issue up, and I'm still on a bit of a high from uploading this one - it's out there for people to see! Yes!

For some reason before I started this blog post I thought that talking about coding Pom would make a satisfying post on its ow. I WAS WRONG. Obviously I forgot that no one actually wants to hear me rambling on about tags and so on. Be glad that I have remembered.

In a way, though, I think the internet's quite bad for me. I always end up spending my evenings refreshing facebook and on the forums - I mean, I'll read as well, but I won't get as much done as I would if the internet wasn't an option. But then, the stuff I do isn't quite as useless as it was a few years ago, when I was just keen on doing rubbish pixel art - I do read a lot of poetry on the internet, and without it I'd never even have really got involved in poetry at all. So it's a bit of a double-edged sword. Hopefully I'll get better at juggling my time - I've been reading a lot recently (largely Neil Gaiman and China Mieville) and I'm hoping to read a lot of Auden over the next few weeks, because I'm sort of on the cusp of realising why people like him so much and I'd like to properly understand.

Mmm, anyway this is becoming one of those posts where I just sort of talk about poetry in general without actually really saying much of consequence. I'm going to read some more of this 1973 edition of The Penguin Book of Love Poetry and enjoy having a lazy Saturday night.