TMA05 Submitted!

Well that's 05 submitted. My choice for TMA05 is, to say the least, somewhat risky. I'm back to poetry despite doing very average the last time I tried it, scoring 77% for 03 which pretty much put paid to getting a distinction average at the end of the course as I now need to score a minimum of 86% for 05 which though not impossible, is unlikely given my score in 03. Obviously I still need to get 86% for the EMA which might also be a tall order, so I'll think no more about that. 
     Anyway it's not really about scores it's about writing - it's funny how we all get caught up in the rush for distinctions and 2.1s or even in some cases rather average sounding  2.2s depending on students individual targets. Perhaps it's unsurprising given it's a university course.  Maybe it would've been better for all had if A215 creative writing had not been. That said I guess the academic achievement at the end of each course, the earning of 60 points and a university credit  means that even if you don't crack it as a writer you're picking up some useful additional education merits to put on your CV. 
     Doing poetry for 05 might strike some as a strange choice for me. I've scored the equivalent of straight 'A's with my prose, and I have the opportunity (now that I've done the mandatory poetry element) to stick with prose until the end.  And I particularly like life writing which was available to me for 05 and remains so for the EMA. But I feel I have unfinished business with poetry that transcends the scores of this course. That said, I want to see if I can get a decent score for a poem before the course ends, and 05 is the best place to try. I already have a safe prose piece in the bank for the all important EMA so it's a kind of now or never situation. 
     I might rue the choice of poetry when my score for 05 comes through, but I can justify it in other ways. 05 is all about producing a piece of marketable work and finding a publisher for it. As much as I love my life writing pieces - including my EMA which is going through its final edits, I simply cannot imagine any outlets wanting to read about my appendectomy or my torrid time in the school Army Cadets.  Who on Earth is going to buy into that. So it's possible that I could write my best piece of life writing ever for 05, and score poorly on the basis that it's completely unmarketable.  So maybe choosing poetry is not such a bad strategy. Even if my confidence as a poet is not as high as it might have been pre 03. 
     The other thing is, if I can do poetry, and I think I can - though the evidence to support that theory is a bit scant at the moment - I'm more likely to write poetry at the end of this course than I am great swathes of prose.  I'm not particularly keen on fiction writing.  I can do it, did it for 01 and 02 and scored high.  But I get a bit fussed over points of view and the notion of plots.  It's probably me being lazy as usual. Christ, what would it do to stop me being lazy? It's a form of self-sabotage if ever there was one. If I put my mind to it and wrote some decent fictional pieces, I know  they're even more marketable than poetry. I don't know of too many millionaire poets, do you?  Biographers, yes, but I've yet to show myself as capable of that area yet since I keep defaulting to autobiography in the life writing options. 
     The poem I submitted is a forty line free verse, split into stanzas of roughly 8 lines with an experimental italicised sea shanty sat in the middle to break it up. I've gone for line-break and enjambment to give it its poetic feel completely ignoring all forms of rhyme, assonance and alliteration. The richness I hope is in the poem's purpose and its diction and it'll stand or fall based those two things.  The idea behind it is based on young people drinking  heavily in seaside towns and ending up carousing around their town's wharves, jetties and harbours, falling in and dying.  Well there has to be an inspiration behind every poem doesn't there?  Just because I don't do jolly or love, or animals  doesn't mean I can't do emotion.  There's a stack of emotion in it, just not the usual - if there's a usual. Anyway I believe in it irrespective of how it does TMA wise, and I intend to submit it to either the identified market expressed in the accompanying commentary, or it'll be flying its way Bridport. 
     As for my EMA masterwork, I'm really liking how it's shaping up. I've done my usual - defaulting into humour which pace 05 might have been my undoing had that not been so serious. 01, 02, and to an extent 03 all had humour, that notoriously subjective thing to do with tone that can work brilliantly if your readers are with you (for readers read tutor) or drop you like an anvil down a well if they're not. Another risk.