1. Because you could read Fiona Moore’s blog instead.
2. Because I considered the topic of rejection but here’s Jeff Shotts on The Art of Rejection and he’s done it better.
3. Because you’ve read enough blogs for one day.
4. Because these sort of lists are hardly original.
5. (You don’t need to read the rest of my reasons. Anyway, there are only ten because the entries that list ‘ten of’ get more hits
6. which is why I’m thinking of stopping at five)
7. or maybe extending it to six in order to say I’m rewriting How (Not) to Get Your Poetry Published and I’m up to the chapter headed ‘Should poets blog’ which ends ‘or you could go and write a poem instead’. (This book is killing me.)
8. Because you could go and write a poem instead.
9. Because there are only nine. Pay some attention to the nine muses, especially Euterpe. I’m simply an interruption.
There was a stage when I followed some poets (who will be nameless for the purpose of this post) on Twitter - but their tweets were so frequent and self-regardingly clever-clever that I was put off reading their poems. I've now abandoned Twitter and will probably do the same with Facebook, having read over the weekend that the really smart people in Hollywood now have mobiles that only do calls and texts. The growing number of poet blogs reminds me of my first time skiing. It was in Italy, and the piste seemed full of children who would execute a perfect turn and then raise their immaculately clad arms in the direction of their parents and shriek "Guardami, Mamma" (for non-Italian speakers: "Look at me, Mummy"). Their infant voices still ring in my ears when I hear of a new blog.