Turquoise Monster

Video of my poem Gay Marriage made a couple of years ago now!

Recording of my song Fiery Redemption.

Recording of my song Flowing.

Recording of my song I Knew Him So Well, with over narrative.

A recording of my song Bubble of Bone.

If you want a wonderfully plan speaking and word smyth then you can not get much better than Mab Jones with poems about pubic hair in the shape of welsh castles to in depth translations and re-tellings of the ancient Welsh Ballads.

Having performed with Mab multiple times she has never failed to have the audience in stitches or riveted with the strength of feeling expressed in her words.

Angie Belcher is a stand up poet meaning she exists in the gap between poets and comedians – not only does she write comic verse but she performs it, creates personas resulting in sketches and whole shows. I have watched her acts getting funnier and funnier over the last few years culminating in Odious Vexed who will shortly be appearing in Stroud (Autumn 2017) as well as zooming around to many comedy festivals and having her own show and supporting some quiet big names. She has compered/hosted many an event I’ve been performing at and helps put us all at ease before and after the performance 🙂

She does the regular rounds at poetry, comedy and music festivals so keep an eye out for her 🙂

I first met Dan on the internet… not as dodgy as it sounds honest! He has been involved in various writing collectives and art exhibitions and found me on twitter and encouraged me to take part and take part I did including being part of the Oxford International Womens Festival and the Higgs Boson Anthology. And that was only the beginning.

Dan does many many things from writing for big name newspapers to authoring some of the most disturbing literature and with a book that means it opens your eyes and mind to new thoughts and concepts or twists what you already know. Dan does all these things.

He does great charity and humanitarian works and he also produced fab performance poetry. I recommend checking his stuff out. https://danholloway.wordpress.com/

The Ghost and the Snail is a collection of poems about me and my husband – mostly love poems but more about how we as misfits fit each other.

I have decided to make it a little zine it may well end up being a larger collection later on but for now it is a zine I am constructing of 10 poems.

When I first started running poetry workshops I did a series of workshops in schools – they were “rough” schools or impoverished or had “challenging behaviour”. There was a grant which was just as well as I would not have been able to get to the schools to run the workshops without the money as we did not have our own car at the time and were in one of our “eep no cash flow” times.

I learnt many things during those community outreach sessions including that sometimes schools do not tell you stuff for fear that you wont come – this is annoying because if I know I can prepare and maybe alter things that might need a bit of a tweak. My workshops are flexible, and I can adapt and it turns out I can do these things even without any prior warning.

But one of the most formative things that happened and something that helped with my science communication as well as the poetry was that there were other poets I could see in action.

One of these was Dreadlock Alien. He was AMAZING!

His natural ease with the kids… and seeing him perform was quite frankly EPIC!

And it is not just me that thinks so, my eldest child ended up in one of his workshops at an event and she loved it so so much. He is one of those artists that seems to always be touring and working with kids 🙂

If you get a chance I would recommend seeing him perform and if there is a chance of a workshop then grab it!