and the winner is....

I was named the winner of the latest round of Slamidopodcast.com's poetry slam last night. It feels great to have won something, and firstly I'd like to thank all those that took the time to vote for me, thanks to Simon for hosting the event, and thanks to the other poets for making it such a good competition.

For a while I was thinking of retiring the poem 'all the girls...', but you know, it may get a new lease of life yet!

So what now? At last I'm able to put something on my poetry CV, and that should make submitting work to magazines a bit more worthwhile, and thats what I want next, to get something published. Also I'd hope that I could get a five minute set somewhere, some night, but that means getting out there, schmoozing the hosts, and making a name for myself - somehow I don't think letting my poetry do all the talking for me is enough. There was a night last year, at a rooftop party in LA, when I met the writer, Jimmy Palmiotti, who gave me some advice, ' have the balls to belive in what you want to say, and then have the balls to say it, and never apologise for what it is you've just said' I've kinda paraphrased him, but it's something that has stuck with me this year, and it's the attitude I need to maintain to make some headway in this writing business.

So, whats next? A new slam idol competition - this time an audio blog over a ten day period writing another poem. I'm usually quite quick in dashing off a poem, so making it last ten days might be tough - or it might show me how to hone a poem in new ways. My first thoughts are to do something more media savvy with the poem, some video, some music, something more web 2.0, a scoial network of a poem! I'll be posting something here over the next few days - then I'm off to Ireland for a long weekend - I'll bring something to record my thoughts.

Keep coming back!

Thanks

Dominic