I’ve not posted for a while, not having much to say. Summer has been fraught.

Today though I had the best news I’ve had in my writerly life. I heard I’d won the Cinnamon Press poetry competion, which means that in 2014 I will have my first collection published.

It’s is not merely exciting to have this major life ambition realised, that I’ve been particularly working for over the last four years. Just as important is the fact that someone who knows about such things – an experienced press – believes your work is good enough to be worth investing time, energy and money in. For a poet often disturbed by self-doubt – and I expect that’s most poets – this says that others believe what you’re doing is worthwhile, that there’s a potential audience for it, that you’re not wasting your time or self-deluding.