Question: When is bad news good news?
Answer: When it is i) not at all unexpected and ii) means that three poems that I wrote back in June and July can now be published on this site!

Back in July, very early on in my poetry writing ‘career’, I entered some of my poems to a couple of poetry competitions. One of the conditions of entry of most writing competitions is that the works submitted have not be published and in this context publication includes being posted on a personal website like this one. Consequently, when I set up this site I included those poems in the Contents but put them behind the protection of a password so that they were not publicly viewable.

The bad news is that last week I found out that, unsurprisingly, my entries had not won either of the competitions. The good news is that this means that I can now publish three more poems – Metamorphosis, Does It Matter? and Home. I guess that as the first poem I wrote, ‘Metamorphosis’ is an important one as it results from the moment when I first cracked things open and started to let the words flow out. ‘Does It Matter?’ is one of my lighter poems – not one that I hold in particularly high regard although it is one that other people seem to like. ‘Home’ was written while I was on holiday walking in the Yorkshire Dales and in a really good place and is definitely one of my favourites.

There is still one poem that I can’t release yet, ‘King Heron’. I have sent that one in to another competition that doesn’t announce its winners until March 2024 so it will have to stay behind its password until then. It’s one of my favourites, perhaps my absolute favourite so far and almost certainly one of my best. But if you want to read that one you will have to wait awhile until I receive some more bad news that’s also good news (or I guess that you could always contact me to ask nicely for the password!).

Anyway, hopefully you enjoy reading Metamorphosis, Does It Matters? and Home and if you do, feel free to leave a comment about them or any of the other poems on this site.

(c) Tim O’Hare, November 2023