Skeleton Architecture

  Hello! Please see above for a screenshot (not sure who the photo is by) from the lovely Fragmented Voices website which has my poem, Escaping Pheasants, as their featured poem today. This poem is inspired by the pheasants which are brought in to our local country house for people who are that way inclined to shoot. Sometimes I see them flapping down from the estate wall and on to the busy road, making a break for it toward the moors. Good luck pheasants. Escaping Pheasants also features in my book, Little Gods, published by the marvellous Roswell Publishing and available from booksellers and Amazon, or get in touch to get a signed copy from me. Other recent successes include two poems in Obsessed with Pipework #105, a Haiku in Coin Operated Press ' Haiku Zine, The Libraries  came out in Culture Matters' Bread & Roses Anthology, and, as I mentioned last time, When you slow a bit you can see the way , another poem from Little Gods, came out in Butcher's Dog #19. I have ...

  Hello! Thought I'd give you a wee update on how things are going in my world! Little Gods came out with Roswell Press at the end of September 2023 and I was really busy for the first bit of October, reading poems from the new book at various local events. I'm really grateful for all the books people bought, but there's still copies available, either online via Amazon  for Kindle or in paperback, or you can get in touch with me at caralmckee (at) gmail (dot) com to get a signed copy of Little Gods and/or First Kiss sent to you in the post! After my reading frenzy at the beginning of October I took a little break for a birthday celebration frenzy (it's still going on, there's a lot to celebrate). I've been meaning to read a couple of poems online too, but I'm having a flare of trigeminal neuralgia which is triggered by talking, so that will come when it comes. I'm hoping to read at the Scottish Writer's Centre launch of their new Mountain & Glen ...

  My second chapbook, Little Gods, is out now with Roswell Publishing and it's blooming gorgeous. It's been such a pleasant experience working with Rae at Roswell Publishing to bring this little book into the world. I love the cover art by Hansuan Fabregas, and it looks gorgeous inside as well! The Kindle version is available right now, and the Paperback will be available in the next few days. Find them here on Amazon. Here's a wee sample for you, the first poem from the chapbook, The Island. The Island I lived on an island once which was sometimes surrounded by sea. Sometimes though the island’s god would decide the island was enough and wrap us up in a soft grey-white cloak  of frost and feathers, take us far away. That’s the thing that no-one tells you: that islands can just go away. I don’t know where they go. It’s not something I’ve read in the physics books, I don’t care, except it’s hard sometimes putting up with the other islanders. At least we can laugh together at...

  Great news today as I'm working on a new chapbook coming soon with Roswell Publishing. This is all I'm going to show you right now - my beautiful notebook, picked up at the Bronte Parsonage Museum in Haworth, on my last ever day out with my Mum. This notebook is full of mostly glued in, revised, scribbled on and annotated poems, some of which are going in to the new wee collection with Roswell. Why did I want to work with Roswell Publishing for this collection? I was following Rae on Instagram because I'd seen her pop up in some other writerly stuff I was interested in, and she seemed to be working with a load of writers I am currently obsessed with - like Claire Askew, Kate Garrett, and Alice Tarbuck for example, so when I saw she was calling for submissions, I went for it. She's been such a joy to work with so far, and I look forward to being able to tell you more about my second chapbook! Find out more about Roswell Publishing on their website , or head over to the...

It was lovely to be invited to do an interview with the marvellous Gutter magazine in the light of my poem, Bending to Nightbreak , being published (in fabulous company) in issue 27. Here's a couple of pics they shared on Instagram from it - a picture of me, and a quote. You can find the whole interview, and one with Simon Wade too, here . 

 I must admit that I've been trying to get into Under the Radar, an excellent poetry magazine, beautifully produced by Nine Arches Press, for years, and so I am particularly delighted to have my poem, God was here , a no-loaves and fishes tale of social distancing in issue 30: The Food Issue. You can get Under the Radar from Nine Arches Press in their shop . While you're there if you fancy buying some poetry, I would highly recommend these three: Be Feared by Jane Burn All my Mad Mothers by Jacqueline Saphra, and  There is (Still) Love Here by Dean Atta

I only discovered Clare Shaw this year, and while I wish I'd discovered their work earlier, I am freaking delighted that I get to discover a poet who is busy doing lots of events and has a sumptuous back catalogue. Clare has immediately joined the ranks of poets I'm obsessed with (like Jacqueline Saphra and Terrance Hayes). Clare has four poetry collections published with Bloodaxe, the latest of which is Towards a General Theory of Love which came out this year (2022). They have been nominated for and won various prizes and do lots of training around poetry and around mental health, and they stay in Yorkshire and have a lovely Burnley accent with a touch of Yorkshire to it. I highly recommend you look them up on YouTube to hear them reading their own poetry, or search for them on Spotify to find an interview. Towards a General Theory of Love is a good looking book with the cover using part of Hieronymus Bosch's The Garden of Early Delights. In it Clare explores love, with t...

A card showing the outside of the shop, with a rather large and lovely octopus on top, reading a book.  A new bookshop opened near us a YEAR ago, and we finally managed a visit!  Seahorse Bookstore is in a great location in Ardrossan, on the way to the Arran ferry terminal, Asda and Cecchini's restaurant, just around the corner from the gorgeous new veggie cafe, Moka, and with plenty of parking nearby.  It's also close to the Ardrossan Town and Ardrossan Harbour train stations, and there are plenty of bus stands nearby. The book shop is clean, bright and friendly, set out over three rooms - non-fiction, fiction, and kids, with a fantastic selection of modern books and classics, and with hot drinks and biscuits, and places to sit and enjoy them. It was quite busy on the day I went so I didn't take pictures in the shop, but there are pictures online here . Things I loved included the white shelving, gorgeous little book display stands (which I think were bamboo, and which I...

I've been struggling to find words I feel are worth writing of late.  Of course the first conclusion I jumped to was that I was done - nothing more of use would come of my writing. But then I thought of other women around my age, in particular the amazing poet who I once met leaving early as I was arriving late for a writing event. Why was she leaving? She said it was because there was nothing she could say. I tried to convince her otherwise, but I failed, and I was horrified that we missed out on her voice because of what I could only think was a crisis of confidence. Lately that same thing has been happening to me. I've attended events, feeling like I ought to go, like I'll enjoy it when I'm there, and then I've not enjoyed it. I've found myself unable to write anything I'd want anyone else to hear, ashamed of my awfulness. I found myself looking at my writing and thinking, who would care anyway? A lot of this I'm putting down to perimenopause - I'...

All the best to you and yours for the festive season and let's hope 2022 brings an easier year for us all. Having spent the beginning of the covid period writing daily poems, getting involved with endless online events, launching a book in lockdown (get in touch at caralmckee at gmail dot com to get your copy), and with a flurry of poetry publications in journals and the like, I found this year's quietness a surprise.  Family members took ill and died (not covid, but certainly not helped), my children struggled with the endless days of schoolwork and not much else, we all struggled. On the day my daughter's guinea pig died she said "everything is dying and nothing is good." I couldn't argue with her. I also couldn't write. I did try sometimes. I attended some events, I tried to style myself through it, but I felt like everything I wrote was terrible. Instead of enjoying events and poetry podcasts I would think them irrelevant or pointless, or decide that i...

 Hello I haven't checked in for a while so thought I'd say hello and let you know what's going on with me. Basically I have a lot going on in my life at the moment, and so I'm not able to do as much writing. However, things are still happening. I try to keep the page which talks about my poetry up to date, so you can always click on that to find out where to find the latest things. Just yesterday I was delighted to have my poem, The Bird  on the Bind Collective website . The Bind Collective is an online platform for creative work examining ecology and the natural world. It's beautifully designed, and well worth an exploration. I particularly enjoyed Judith Klausner's work, (de)composed . I am also delighted to have a poem coming out in issue 96 of Obsessed with Pipework . I have been submitting to them for quite a while, but never found a fit before. One of the editors at OwP is Katerina Neocleous  who, like me, has had a book published with Maytree Press ( you...

 Can we start by getting the 'Don't judge a book by its cover' thing out of the way? Book covers are so important. They tell you what you're getting yourself into - crime, romance, a gritty thriller, you'll be able to tell from the cover. If you spot a book that looks like one by a favourite author, it's because someone wants you to connect it with their writing, and it's probably worth a read. I seem to always have three books on the go at the moment, so let's have a look at what I'm reading right now and what the covers have to say about them: 1. The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers - this is a beautiful looking book, as are all the books in the series. I bought this because I heard an interview with Becky on the Imaginary Worlds Podcast  which was fascinating, but I recognised the book because of the beautiful cover. You can buy it here . I'm really enjoying reading this but I am struggling with my attention span during the c...

Happy Yorkshire Day!  It's a weird kind of Yorkshire day with lockdown closing down my home town of Ilkley where we were supposed to be this weekend. I had hoped for afternoon tea at the White House on the moor, instead I'll be visiting the new market in my new home town in Scotland. This time last year I was on holiday in Scarborough (pictured) with my family, and my poem, My First Kiss, had just come out on the rather marvellous The Poetry Village website. You can see that here . For a while I'd been trying to get a publisher interested in a small collection of my poems, with no luck. When I saw that Maytree Press , the independent publisher associated with The Poetry Village, were looking for small collections I decided I'd send them something, but instead of sending them poems from the collection I'd brought together myself, I sent them poems that were connected with Yorkshire.  To be honest, I didn't expect much to happen. I'd been rejected many times, ...

First Kiss is available now! You can buy it from me - just click the button below to buy your copy, which I'm happy to sign.    Want it signed? Alternatively, you can buy it in the Maytree Press shop , along with other books like the award winning The Collective Nouns for Birds by Amanda Huggins. Here's what people have been saying about it so far: "terribly beautiful, and also terribly intriguing..." - Dave  "Your book is fantastic, love all of them, well done" - Wendy If you missed the live launch on Instagram you can still find it on IGTV here . 

With First Kiss coming out this Friday - 22nd May 2020, and now available to pre-order (you'll find the order button in the sidebar from the homepage). I was hoping to do all sorts of events, and plan to, once we can do that kind of thing again, but for now I'm going to be doing a live launch on Insta at 5.30pm on Friday 22nd. You'll find my Instagram account  here , and here's the deets.

My first poetry collection comes out on 22nd May 2020, and is now available to pre-order. I was hoping to do all sorts of events, and plan to, once we can do that kind of thing again, but for now I'm going to be doing a live launch on Insta at 5.30pm on Friday 22nd. You'll find me here . It's a coming of age chapbook, beautifully put together by Maytree Press, with gorgeous cover art from Annie Ovenden. Here's what my publisher had to say: First Kiss is a remarkable debut collection from Yorkshire born writer Cara L McKee,  And here's a little taster: I thought that my first kiss was required for the rich boy tearing petals from gardenias in October, throwing them from the old bridge into the Wharfe, wailing that the blooms would get more kisses from the water than he would get from me. If you would like to get a copy, I can send you a signed one - just let me know in the note to seller.   You'll find the button to buy a copy in the side bar on...

On Tuesday 10th March, just before everything got a bit mad on the meeting up front, at the very lovely Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA) in inclement Glasgow, the Scottish Writers' Centre launched its beautiful chapbook - Island & Sea - the first in a series of five. I'm really happy to have had my poems chosen to be serialised throughout the series, and was delighted to have the chance to take part in the launch, and to get to hear the other work in the gorgeous wee chapbook, and the stories behind it. Also I'd never before had the experience of a signing table, and that was gloriously friendly I can't find the details of how to buy your own copy, because the Scottish Writers' Centre are working on their website just now, but perhaps you could email them here.  It's a truly lovely little book, put together by Figment Books under the meticulous eye of the very lovely Laura Fyfe. I was hard pressed to choose a wee snippet to quote, but I couldn't ...

So this is happening!!!!! Due out in May, from Maytree Press, my first poetry collection! Maytree Press have written a lovely piece about it, so go check that out. Maytree Press post here .

I am currently reading Adventures in Form: A Compendium of Poetic Forms , Rules & Constraints, edited by Tom Chivers, and published by Penned in the Margins in 2012. It's such a good book, particularly because it shows you how people have done surprising, interesting, challenging things with their poetry, which I find both useful and inspiring. Buy Adventures in Form here . I love to use a form as a way to get my poems into shape, and I love the way other poets use form, I'm particularly excited about the way Terrance Hayes used the sonnet form in his book American Sonnets for my Past and Future Assassin, which I may have raved on about previously on this blog. Google it, it's widely available and there are lots of the poems online. One poem that particularly caught my attention in Adventures in Form was You Wave Me by Chrissy Williams (the start of it - titles only - is in the image). It's in the Found Materials section and uses song titles to form a mixtap...

I seem to have been talking about rejection in one way or another a bit lately, so I thought I'd share a post with you. Personally I am of the opinion that you've got to give people the chance to say no, getting rejected is part of the process of getting published, and if you're not trying to get it published, that can sometimes be because you're afraid of rejection. That's OK, rejection sucks, but I was inspired by Kim Liao who, in this 2016 article  described her successful friend's technique, of aiming for one hundred rejections a year. As Liao points out, this isn't a new idea. In his excellent book, On Writing , Stephen King talks about collecting his rejection slips on a nail. Liao herself decoupaged a desk with her rejection slips, to encourage herself to move on, to revisit, revise, to find better fits for her work. I've got to be honest, sometimes you get rejected because your work sucks. Even very famous writers sometimes create work that s...