Turquoise Monster

I recorded a sound track to go with my non-linear poem on identity Love: A Stranger Dream.

I’ve been making key rings using the art work out of my visual poetry colouring book Love: A Stranger Dream.

Well it has been a busy summer already and we are only about half way through!

I’ve just finished my main festival rounds but still have a couple to go!

Events:

16-17 July – Horoscope Life and Ecstasy – performance

19th-21st Aug Maze Festival – performance

27-28 August – The Grand Mock-Tales and Creativity Tea – workshops and creative drives

Nov – Purple Fest

Projects:

1) A Stranger Dream – visual poetry colouring in book thingy

I am hoping to do markets and stalls in autumn and run up to Christmas so that people can get their hands on Love: A Stranger Dream merch which is all currently sitting in my bedroom needing new homes! (p.s. you get some when you sign up to my Patreon. The first 6 months some of it is Patreon exclusives but after that time period it will appear in my Etsy shop).

There is also a dress in the making so I can literally wear and be my visual poem 😀

2) The Political Converse – poetry, audio and art

There is already a little zine of this name containing 10 poems (warning contains opinions) and a few audio files on my Bandcamp but there is so much more that needs to appear. I have cartoons I started two elections ago which just need inking and scanning – I have the Brex-Shit colouring sheets which when finished will be a visual poetry colouring book though not quiet like Love: A stranger Dream!

The album needs updating and a second zine needs producing as I have enough poems for that now.

There is also another two songs I need to finish recording and editing – the over all plan is that there will be a double album of songs and poetry with an art book and/poetry collection to go with it.

Again zines come with Patreon subscription other wise you have to wait to catch me at an event or when I put them in the Etsy shop!

3) Turquoise Monster Collection – poetry collection

Pretty much just need to get around to putting it up on Amazon, zine/chapbook of and pdf are no more but I may resurrect if there is interest as I have not reached the 1000 copy cut off I places on myself for chapbook production 🙂

4) The Little Books – kids poetry

Home mades and short runs of these 10 poem collections for kids have been about a few years now – I’ve got workshops based on them which I take to Lit Fests and into schools etc… and they did only start out as a thing for my kids and then a thing to raise some money to buy books for the school… I think it’s time they become proper books you can buy on the net etc… this will include a seasons collection of four rolled into one including the stories I’ve added to the audio versions of the books.

5) Vispo – concret, illustrated poems

Obv. I’ve already mentioned Brex-Shit which is scathing satirical works on the farce that is current british politics (warning it’s not kind to anyone some colouring sheets are already up and ready for you as some free stress relief).

But there is also a mythical creatures illustrated poetry book in the works – I have most of the images sketched but not inked and there are a lot of them and I am still deciding the exact format of the book but as and when they appear I will pop them up on Wigglypet Press for you guys.

The Neons – a secret Patreon project so that is all I shall be saying 😀

Research:

Ok so part of what I do is science communication – I mainly have puppet shows and science-craft, exploration workshops but a little side project to this is trying to link the science back to poetry 🙂

Of course I can always just write poems about the scientist puppets but I like to actually link them – so for example Ada Lovelace is Byron’s daughter (yes the Byron), Darwin a) wrote poetry b) was the grandson of a poet, Brahmagupta wrote his maths in sanskrit which used verse for such things and so on – basically if you know of any little snippets like these – please share them with me 🙂 I would be very grateful 🙂

Thankyou muchly.

I think that is everything for now 😀

Video of my political performance piece Paid-Mockracy.

Paid-mockracy
Part of the lock and key
Chain and stock
of Slavery
To “counteract” plebiscite democracy
Is this really what you want to see?

An intellectual elite
Is sweet
Like rotting meat
Cos my family are no
dimmer than me
with my degree
I was just lucky
I got to go to university

And that’s part of the problem
With no safety net to catch
Futures can be snatched
Pushed back down
Never to bloom
Stunted in the ground
Because its hard
No one hands you
A get out of jail free card
When there’s no bank of mum and dad
It doesn’t make you bad
but career is a pipe dream
When you are floundering in the stream
Drowning

No buffer to fall back on
Yes if you make it you are strong
But you shouldn’t have to be
Exclusion is exclusion
and that is wrong
Like taking the vote
Off of “little scrotes”
Without bothering to ask why
Without checking the stats
On who and how we die
Of socio-economic class
And how getting by
Makes you pass
The chance of better
It’s a gamble
Gambling’s for tools
When it’s not just your future
On the line

You can climb out the poverty pit
Fooled ya!
Can’t believe you fell for that shit

So think

When you take the vote away
When you make people pay
That’s tyrannies way

Paid-mockracy
Is paid for in blood
Yours and mine
Whilst fat cats dine
On the wine
Of generational wealth
Dynastic stealth
Toast to monarchies health

Violence rocks the boat
Bloated faces gloat
At what they have or have not done
This road is short and a dreadful one
We know the destination
It ends in devastation

Human rights anulled
Sold
To the highest bidder
Who’s the winner?
When the masses are sent to war
Because you know who dies?
That’s right the poor
In shit and gore

Those with little to loose
Those who don’t get to choose
Those powerless against
convincing rouse
Societal’s short fuse
Whilst the comfy snooze
And the desperate booze
Their way to an early grave
Which is still later than our young brave

The unknown solider
Who shoulders the blame
Of buildings caved in
Of genocide’s sin
Self mutilation
Of nations
Self cannibalism to win

Nothing

Paid-mockracy
Is eating us from within.

So I have a Patreon account – the idea is that people can basically sponsor me to create art, poetry, science etc… at the moment I am posting the progress of a secret art project up on there. Though the art work will eventually go live for everyone to see you are looking at a year or so I think but if you are a patreon then you can see how and when the project progresses – this is only fair as it is money from this platform that has allowed me to buy the art supplies I need for said project.

There will be extras for the higher paying patreons as well 🙂

Also it is not the only thing – often my stories and poems appear on there before they go public as well.

One secret art project.

My Britain is broken,
but I shall try to fix it,
though it may have to be in a shape new,
Scotland I want to keep you,
you are a part of me,
but I think you should go,
for your own sake,
though I scream don’t leave us behind!
Maybe North and South can make piece
be whole and Ireland will be an Island once more.
Wales won’t be far behind, Cornwall?… the isles?
well you think on it ok.

It’s fractured from a blow,
not sure where the crack propagation will end.
The EU they say is sinking, disintegrating,
and I look on History and see how World Wars begin
I shudder.

And I hope that you are right and I am wrong,
because if you are right then the consequence…
are that I look silly,
and lose the career
I have been building for a decade or more,
but I will swallow that if the Nation,
if the world is better off.
I hope you are right but I fear
yes I mean FEAR, you are wrong.

For I am petrified with what I have seen,
in this referendum,
how natures spill and split,
becoming vengeful with spite,
my own included

But what ever the outcome,
I will be kind
as I can make the world as good as I can,
here in the now in this place.
I picked up the smashed wine glass at the bus stop outside the polling station so the toddlers would not get cut,
I removed the jagged glass bottle,
cracked into caltrop from the step of the hair salon,
so delicately sandled feet would not be cut.
And though I feel isolated and stabbed in the back,
by family and friends who knew…
I needed the EU funding but voted the way they voted,
crowing about it,
that they did that anyway,
Knowing me, I – part of them needed this thing,
I, not some amorphous “other”,
But ME
And all the rejection and hurt I feel…
I am going to lengths to try and not fall out,
though the anger is bubbling over,
and I feel betrayed and bewildered
and worried.

Worried that I have two kids to bring up within this mess.
I hope it’s all worth it, I really do,
but I feel we are all in free fall
I’m not sure there’s a parachute packed.

I painted these pictures to remind me not to hate:
Love,
Hope,
Perseverance and…
Serenity

but they are chaotic,
as we know not the way the wind will blow.

They queued up one by one by one,
They laid their necks upon the space,
That had been blunted by generations,
Of freedom so the blade above was forgotten,

They spewed anger into the streets,
Again and again with blood letting,
Pulverised the apples
They left the rotten core,

They queued up one by one by one,
Lost and afraid and turned to fear,
By those seeking scapegoats and straw men,
The burnings began with a flag not a book

Luckily it failed
As the fires that would be – failed
All those flames that would have wiped out homes
Families – tamed by regulations
And yes that is a double edged blade
But one that can be honed and perfected
If not mangled and melted

They burnt the homeless mans tent
All he had within
by the KFC
They… wanted out
They…
They… feel powerless, they are askewed
And I told you treat people like shit
They will believe in that shit
They will become that shit
They will cling on by finger nails of reasoning
They are reactionary
They are not stupid
They are in survival mode
Be grateful if you’ve never known it

You drove the wedge
Sinking it deeper in financial lines
You laughed at expletives used as words
You decided that those there, they are beneath you
No education, no prospects,
No realisation of the rights they posess,
But you don’t know how hard it is to climb out
You don’t see the hollow cheeks of despair
The despised in the food line
Aggressive architecture to stop the homeless resting
The charity warehouses and centres closed

People on the edge
People growing weary
People ready to bite
They bit
The hate is unleashed

I vote remain
They vote go
You vote maybe one way maybe not

And the fists are primed
And we are the meat
All of us are the meat
Pounded and pulverised
The meat
That’s US
Us within or without
But within at least we wont be cut
As much

Don’t be brave
Brave people do stupid things
Don’t vote with your heart
That again is a reactionary thing
Stop… look and think!

What do I want?
What about the other?
Crack down the wall of us and them
Tribalism is cannibalism
Don’t condemn the opposition
Let them speak
Listen and…
Then debate
No name calls
Or flotillas on the Thames
Amusing as it all is
It is dire in it’s consequence

We queue up one by one by one
We queue….
We wait
What ever the result
I hope we have not unleashed the plague
Of Fascism.

I was going to say how she found me on the Pride day and said I would go to hell, how my art was satanic and gay…
And I knew I could not write what I would have wrote, and I lit a candle in the night for he came and shot them down…
They died. Washing the joy with blood such that all the tears of nations can not erase the stain and nor should they
For hate strips us all to the bone, cutting out the heart but it still beats. I was going to tell you…
About the old woman on the hunt during Pride who made me scared, made me hide…
And all my wishes and prays can not alter a thing, I can not heal wounds near to me and they were half a world away…
He shot them down because they were gay, he killed and he maimed and he took away…
and he died as they died blood split in vein or out we all bleed the same…
And love is all I have to offer and a candle flame.

This Saturday I will be taking A Stranger Dream and assorted merch to the Mini Mall Con in the Eastgate Shopping Centre in Glos! http://oktruebelievers.com/glosmallcon