First off I am running a kids workshop at The Cheltenham Poetry Festival, it costs £5 and there will be stickers and monsters 🙂
I’ve been stupidly busy lately:
Today I am getting ready to run a workshop on puppetry, for this I am mainly using my Cuddly Science Crew plus a dragon and rabbit that were bought and not made and designed by my mum and me. I am hoping the Ada puppet is going to get lots of outings this year as it’s Ada’s 200th birthday so she needs to have outings really.
Ada has already had a couple of outings this year – including Science Show Off which was videoed – this was my grown up only show so the vid is not suitable for children!
My performance is still not top notch but when I think of my first Science Show Off verses this one there is just such a huge difference!
In part that is due to the lovely Joy-Amy Wigman and her Cuffing It course that I did in the autumn. Realising that I am still so damn shy and that my stage craft really needs to be better if I am going to be taking Cuddly Science out more, I went for the thing that scares me most – Improve Comedy.
The course was a huge confidence booster and has just given me a few little extras to fill gaps with extra when I forget words or can’t read my script (yes I should have had it memorised but I didn’t!).
Regardless of my performance everyone seems to love the puppets – they really really do and the responses on twitter when ever she appears is amazing 🙂
Me and mum are planning on starting on the next five puppets over the summer even though I failed to get the funding I hoped would pay for their construction.
Golden girl fallen from grace
How can this be?
Dreams all laid to bed
All those thoughts you had
Lost beneith the dross of days
Spent surviving
Golden girl fallen from grace
Everything was laid out for you
You could have had it easy
But you chose to live instead
Now your dreams are ashes
And ideas all seem the same
As time licks by indecently
Golden girl fallen from grace
Wieghed down with life
Responsibilities kill the genius
Fears killing the mind
Insinerating the inspirations
Those brilliant flashes silenced
Intelligence hidden
Golden girl fallen from grace
What was your crime?
Not believing in yourself
Understanding grief and yet coping
Listening to a heart that bleeds
A thousand things you could have been
Ultimately you could not choose
And so ultimately you loose
Locked in the centre
Vibrating through the mind
Through the soul
Eons pass
Night folds to twilight
Pain dims in the story of birth
Rhythem nature, nature rhythem
The cycle begins
The cycle ends within itself
Pitch building
Fear of the unknown
Growing, dimishing
Towards the end
Towards the beginning
Black, white, red, black, blue, yellow, bold
Glowing as of light
From within
Pictures of the mind
Pictures of the soul
Pictures of worlds
Growing small, growing large
Inside and out
The poem a day challenge that I run February called WoPoWriMo has been amazing!
I’ve also just heard that several of the poems people wrote during last years challenge have been published – this is amazing and kudos goes to the writers but at the same time they’ve said they couldn’t have done it without the writing prompts (I don’t believe them but I think it may have taken them a longer while to get around to writing the poems down!).
Anyway the challenge maybe over but there are lots and lots of poems for us all to be typing up and editing and of course I have all the tutorials to write up 🙂
I hope all the other poets will join me for another poem a day challenge in April called NaPoWriMo!
Trapped in mental annialation
Within this hell
Achiving nothing on the scale
Working endlesses to strike a balance
That others unthinkingly tip
A painful realisation
Within this role
Everything relies on you
But only in civility
And your potential is eroded
House Slave
Trapped in this plight
Within this domestic domain
When something should have grown
From all that you had learned
Those inspirations you saw
In sureal survivial
Within this idiocy
Things need to be done
Life goes ticking on
And who you are
Is buried beneath it all
Last night I went to Buzz Words – a local poetry night including guest poet, workshop and open mic readings. I realised that I had not been for a long time 🙁 Due to college and health and busy-ness but Bobby Parker was reading and I really like his stuff which I think I initially discovered during the Cheltenham Poetry Festival. Apart from wanting to hear Bobby read, and try out a new poem myself – I like attending workshops as I nearly always end up with a usable poem from them.
The same happened this time. I’ve had a couple of ideas knocking about in my head for a while, ideas that I thought should be in poems but I wasn’t quiet sure how and so when the workshop started I had material that just sort of slotted together with the brief. Stuff I would have tried to make 3 poems out of clicked nicely into place in one poem.
So basically what I am saying is – if you are stuck with writing go to a workshop. In fact sometimes I find just going to poetry readings work, as if hearing other poets work unlocks something – it becomes safe to write as you are not the only one? Or something like that!
It is that time of year again – I will be attempting to not only write a poem a day through out February but to spend an hour each day working on poetry stuff. I have book cases full of note books with stuff to type up, only a fraction of it is poetry but that is still a lot poems just sitting there, awaiting editing and reading etc…
Also I am once again in charge of the WoPo site, so you might want to go and check out the fabulous writing exercises and guest authors I have lined up for you all 😉
Having said all of this I had better actually get started and do some writing or typing or both!.
Well I have created the roughs and now have to make them good! I’m still working on the typing up and stuff each day but the main premise of the writing challenge is done! This is one of the reasons I love writing challenges, as they really help me get all that poetry out of my head! They work as writing drives for me though I have friends who hate them 🙂
Anyway I am going to be gearing up for the writing challenge that I run each year in February called WoPoWriMo. There will be lots of tutorials and things on the site and guest authors!
So I suppose I had better be getting on with that!
