Turquoise Monster

Dystopia watching,
the future is now,
it happened slowly…
number and file,
blood and bile

Dear Mr Grove

This is an amazingly harrowing spoken word / performance poem about our education system here in the UK by Jess Green.

A new month has snuck up and begun on me – this sadly means I missed a couple of deadlines for poems and stories and that, that I wanted to submit. But it also means I am in a month of exciting challenges.

Number one is Screnzy or Script Frenzy which is a spin off of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), the idea is that you write a 100 page script in a month. I have been focusing on comic book or graphic novel scripts and so that is what I will be focusing on again this year. You can follow the progress more closely on Purple Monster. I will also be doing the script for my puppet show, which is part of my course work – I basically plan to spend 30 hours working on these types of project – priority has to go to my Ada Lovelace script as I have a deadline at the end of the month. (Ada is the science part! and has drawings to go with! Though I may also be running some science camp activities over Easter).

Number two is NaPoWrimo, this is another poetry writing challenge – again the idea is that you write a poem a day but I plan to spend 30 hours on poetry stuff in general this month.

Number three is that I hope to release The Little Book of Easter Poetry audio for download – I will probably rope this in with the NaPo stuff. I also want to do some work on my game design stuff but I will have to see how things go especially as I am starting the month off event managing and comparing at the Jordans Cheltenham Poetry Festival 🙂

I found this amazing video – I hate labels and this poem is very powerful.

I have been working on my visual poetry journal again lately, this was last nights creation.

The text says:

Shopping!

For shoes, bags, Dresses – That just WOW number
Meaning Nothing in the empty dark
Sinking down on digitised Gold…
Give in and consume, be part of it and dream of meaning
After all there Are Bargins too
Be Found – money drips Away

This year is the fifth year (on average) of The Monster Blogs and so I am doing various give aways etc… March I decided to make a hand written and illustrated poetry book called Berries and Blood. There will only ever be a max of ten of these and only that many if I can source the gaze box card I used for the cover – at the moment I have enough for one other copy to be made. There will be other hand made poetry collections but not this one. It may appear as a print edition later but I’m not sure about that yet.

All my hand written and illustrated books are restricted to ten copies ever. Hand bound with extra hand done extras to the cover are restricted to 100.

To win this book you have to comment below on the thread and I will put all the names in a shaky bag and get one of the kids to pick at random at the end of the month 🙂

The danger of home schooling is that the kids only learn what the parents wants
The danger of forced schooling is that the kids only learn what the governments want
The danger of religous schooling is that the kids only learn what the religons want
The danger of military schooling is that the kids only learn what the soliders want
The danger of no schooling is that the kids only learn what the streets want

Teach the kids to think and question and root out the answers for themselves
Teach empowerment and watch them bloom
Teach don’t preach

Find the technique that fits the kid
In a group or on their own
A mix of both
Repeating, making, playing, mimic and more

The turmoil, the pain
The trials to fill in that form again

All your energy
All your time
Don’t you know being ill’s a crime?

Too ill to work
No one wants the lame
But fit for work
Hide your face in shame

And when the humiliation is done
When ATOS and the government have won
You’re not disabled come the sneers
Then a tide of tears…
Gets you harassed on the train
With hate crimes that snap crutches and canes

And yet the hunger begins to burn
As desperation kicks in
What do we learn?

That the Vulnerable are vulnerable
The Unstable, unstable
That those who with benefits could survive
Without may soon die

Skivers?
No… just Strivers
Who have fallen upon hard times
But never mind all that
Just pretend it’s all fine

I’ve been reading around the blogs again and finding out stuff I probably should have already known. First off I knew that poetry, even ‘professionally’ published doesn’t sell in huge numbers. You are looking at about 500 copies a title, today I found out that it is basically the same number for picture books over on the Creative Penn blog.

So it looks like my kids poetry picture books aren’t going anywhere fast!

The question is will they do better or worse for being a combination of niche markets? I don’t know and I am not going to give up on them just yet!

Being seasonal I do not expect to sell many until the autumn anyway but sold 9 last week though that is almost all the sales since the new year.

To write the words, I need the thought
To form the thought, I need the pen
To find the pen, I need to shop

The Stationers, aladdin’s cave
Which thoughts should I think
Pink glitter, or stealth nib?

I choose the pen to form the thought
That lurks in the shadows of my mind
Winkled into the light by a tip
Ink slick and smooth

It is an obsession – stationary
A longing for pens, different to hold
Forming different patterns as they glide