changming's lit endeavours updated

1. as before, i have been able to cough out quite as much poetry in recent months, almost 50 pieces within only several fits. however, very few are really satisfactory to me; naturally, i am becoming more and more anxious that my talent will be running out soon, just as the chinese idiom (jianglang caijin) goes;

2. not surprisingly, less strong work coupled with less vigourous effort to submit my poetry result in dramatic decrease in acceptance in both quantity and 'quality': 11 acceptances in jan, 12 in feb, and only 5 in this month of march;

3. i feel deeply grateful to publisher Virgil Kay (of halifax-based press known as Fowlfox) for his friendly encouragement - he thinks so highly of my ms titled east idioms that he not only says the collection deserves more publisherly/readerly attention but also has been trying to find a more 'established' press for it on my behalf. no matter what the result, his appreciation of my work is greatly appreciated;

4. when i become fully functional online in may, i will begin to prepare for publication Kelly Kurt's poetry ms titled Divergence: Entertaining and Edifying Verse  (Modern Senryu Series & Limericks). this project is a second joint venture with Fowlfox Press. although i have neither enough computer skills nor good eye health to really take up such technically demanding projects, i will gladly do this one, to learn at least;                                                     

5. after much ado and exactly 3 months of delay, the 60 thousand hardcopies of create abundance in 6 different sino-foreign editions have finally been delivered locally in shenzhen and, in particular, the last long overdue payment was made in surrey last night, thus putting a solid period at the end of the terribly rambling sentence.  athough this may prove the last major publishing project for me or my press, i strongly hope there will be more such tasks down the road;

6. since last autumn, i have been practising chinese calligraphy (草书 cursive style), a traditional literary art i was very much interested in as early as 35 years ago. i wish to write every chinese character like a picture, like a poem, and i think i have made quite good progress. once i know how to do so in the near future, i will try to post some on my sites;

7. i have long since stopped making poetry submissions to literary journals published in the chinese language -  i find my poetry is simply not up to the taste or standard of contemporary chinese editors, esp those in mainland china and taiwan who seem to have chosen to totally ignore my work in a conspiracy. (definitely, my track records show that my chinese poetry is more acceptable to chinese literary journals based in hong kong, singapore or north america.)