After living with these poems for more than a year, I’ve started to see the person inside them more clearly — not the real me exactly, but the outline of someone I once allowed to speak.

That person has good qualities.
They pay attention. They know how to listen for the small sounds: the hiss of disinfectant, the tremor of glassware, the shuffle of passengers settling into seats. They look carefully, maybe too carefully, and turn each detail into a kind of evidence. There’s tenderness in that, and humour too — a quiet irony that keeps sentiment from tipping over.

They also understand the strange ethics of travel. How beauty and guilt can sit side by side at a buffet table. How privilege can shimmer like sea light, easy to admire, hard to ignore. I like that about them — their moral curiosity, their unwillingness to look away.

But there are flaws too.
This poet, this traveller, sometimes hides behind the act of noticing. They stay a little too safe, too composed, always the watcher and rarely the one watched. The voice can become too even, too polite, like a dinner conversation that never quite gets personal.

And sometimes they list the world instead of living in it.
The poems start collecting things — sunsets, cocktails, towels — until the rhythm turns static, as if observation alone could replace experience.

Still, I don’t dislike this version of myself. They were trying to be honest, and to be kind. Maybe they were learning how to see.

If the next poems are different — more sprawling, less well-behaved, full of weather and interruption — it’s because I’ve stepped back into the middle of life. The watcher is still there somewhere, scanning the horizon, but the poems will have to make room now for the person who keeps missing the boat.

For a long time, these poems lived in notebooks and drafts, jotted down each day aboard a ship circling the world. They began as small postcards to myself—10-line dispatches from the deck, from memory, from wherever the sea carried us. Over the past year, I’ve revisited each one, sometimes gently, sometimes with a scalpel, trying to listen for the real voice underneath. My voice.

Some poems didn’t make the final cut into the collection. A few felt too similar in tone or subject to others, some didn’t quite carry the same voice as the rest of the collection, and a handful, let’s be honest, were probably beyond redemption. But I’m not concerned. They could be replaced easily enough by my stories of previous cruises of events I would have talked over with our little group of friends we chatted to every night.

I’ve edited every poem now. Not just for line breaks or punctuation, but to be sure each one sounds like me. That they belong to the same world. That they carry the tone I meant, even when I wasn’t sure what I meant at the time.

DAY 83: EPITAPH FOR A DAGGA BOY (CAPE TOWN)

Mark, our guide, eases the jeep to a gentle halt,
and we fall quiet where old bones sprawl,
brittle edges breathing dust and dried blood,
sun-baked marrow, silence thick as heat.

A buffalo’s ghost still lingers here:
its hooves once thundered the open plain,
its breath defied the wind’s sharp reply.
In its prime, a match for anything wild.

Vultures pirouette the sky above
in a slow, macabre ballet of wings.
Ragged feathers rasp against dry air,
like sandpaper drawn across a drum.

Their shadows reel across cracked, red earth.
Hyenas skulk just beyond the scrub,
their laughter splits the afternoon wide open
like a snapped femur, white and unclean.

Mark surveys the scene, his brow furrowed tight.
“Looks like this old Dagga Boy,” he says,
“couldn’t keep up.” His voice dips, softening
the way it does with what can’t be explained.

“He picked a good spot by the river’s bend,
golden grass, mud baths, the works,” he says.
“A buffalo’s kind of retirement.
No golf carts though, ja?” His smile flickers,
fading as he stares down at the bones again.

“Had a decent run, I’d reckon,” he adds,
leaning back with a slow and satisfied creak.
“Stood his ground, maybe found love out here
beneath the thorn trees, in the dry season.”

The jeep roars again, kicking up old dust.
We lurch forward, heat waves curling ahead,
leaving the skull grinning in our wake
as if it knows something we’d rather not.
Another mile, another hour slips by,
closer to whatever waits in the grass.

The next step is to begin letting them go.

I’ll be sending them out in small batches, one a week, to magazines that might welcome them. I don’t expect a flood of acceptances, but I do believe these poems will find their way. Here’s a list I’m considering but of course there are many other magazines I want to submit to, and of course there are poetry competitions as well.

Here’s a list of some journals I’m considering:

• Atrium – Emotionally resonant, well-crafted poems that balance clarity with depth.
• Bad Lilies – Bold, contemporary, often formally adventurous work.
• Interpreter’s House – Thoughtful, image-rich poems with a narrative thread.
• London Grip – Accessible, reflective poems, often subtly political.
• Magma – Regularly welcomes travel-based or themed submissions.
• New Ohio Review – Image-rich, humane poetry with emotional resonance.
• Ploughshares – Prestigious but approachable for grounded, serious work.
• Poetry Review – Ambitious, layered poems with strong, distinctive voices.
• Rattle – Open to narrative, humorous, and heartfelt poems.
• The Fig Tree – Visual, nature-inflected or spiritual poems.
• The High Window – Lyrical poetry with an international or literary edge.
• The Long Poem Magazine – Poems over 50 lines: narrative, meditative, or experimental.
• The North – Intelligent, place-based, and reflective poems.
• The Rialto – Original work with character and clarity.
• The Seventh Quarry – Musical poems with international flavour.
• The Southern Review – Place-rooted, quietly observant poems.
• The Threepenny Review – Clear imagery, wit, and understatement.
• Under the Radar – Emotional, precise, and accessible poetry.
• Wild Court – Welcomes both lyrical and narrative work.

I believe they should be published because they speak to experiences many people share but don’t always talk about: the strangeness of time at sea, the joy of small rituals, the weight and humour of memory, and the quiet ways we carry grief and love. They’re not grand or showy, but they’re honest. And sometimes, honesty travels furthest.

Publishing in magazines isn’t just about recognition, it’s about giving them a place in the world beyond my notebook. Letting them speak to someone else, as they once spoke to me.

After so long living with them, the thought of sharing them feels both unsettling and necessary, like watching something you’ve grown used to keeping close begin to take its own shape and life elsewhere.

If you’re reading this and know of magazines or journals that might be a good fit, feel free to suggest them as I’m open to surprises.

Thanks for following the journey so far. I’ll post updates as the poems begin to appear, if and when they do.

After writing and revising over a hundred poems for my cruise collection, I realised I often forgot the same basic things—especially when I was close to finishing a poem. So I made this checklist to help me decide when a poem is done. Or at least ready to be read aloud or sent out.

Poetry Completion Checklist

At each revision stage, here are some of the questions I sometimes forget to ask myself—but should:

Does the poem have a single, clear central idea or theme?
Are sensory details present to help readers see, hear, and feel the poem’s world?
Is the point of view consistent? (Shifting POV can confuse, unless it’s intentional and clearly handled.)
Are the tenses consistent throughout?
Does the poem evoke the emotion I intended?
Is the structure logical and coherent?
Have I checked spelling and grammar carefully?
Are homophones and typos corrected?
Are the images and metaphors clear, vivid, and effective?
Am I showing rather than telling? (Does the poem evoke emotion through language and imagery?)
Does it still feel authentic and true to my voice?
Will the poem connect with a reader’s emotions, memories, or curiosity?
Does the poem still surprise me?
Is there a reason for the reader to care?
Is the rhythm consistent, and does the poem flow easily?
Is there any awkward phrasing?
Are there any unnecessary words or lines that don’t add anything?
Have I read it aloud to catch any clunky bits or flat patches? (Reading often reveals things I don’t see on the page.)
Is everything clear enough for a reader who isn’t me? (What’s obvious to me might not be to someone else.)
Am I revising to improve the poem or just out of habit or fear of letting it go?

That’s already a long list and there are always more questions. But after I’ve been through this process (sometimes too many times), and I think the poem might be finished, I still ask myself a few final things:

The Afterthought Stage

1) Would I be happy to perform this poem to an audience, at a reading or an open mic, or send it out to magazines?
There’s nothing worse than reading a poem you thought was brilliant and realising halfway through that it’s not working.

2) Have I revised this poem so many times that I’m now just producing another version of the same thing?
Not better, just different. Like Monet’s 25 versions of Haystacks—sometimes the changes are variations, not improvements. I’m no longer making real progress, just rearranging the same ideas.
me spot what’s missing or give me permission to stop editing and let the poem go.

Every poet needs their own process and I’ve found that having a checklist like this helps me avoid finishing too soon or revising forever. In the end, it’s about finding the balance between control and letting go. And trusting that, even if this version isn’t perfect, it’s the one ready to meet the world. My cruise poems are now ready.