Turquoise Monster

Just a quick note to say that I am performing/reading at the Waterstones in Cheltenham on this Saturday (7th of September 2013) at around 1 o’clock in the afternoon – before me are a lovely bunch of poets reading. The even lasts from 11 till 2 and there is a Costa coffee in the shop too for the coffee fiends 🙂

Last night I went to Well Versed at the Muffin Man – I took some blurry pictures on my little touch pad but haven’t worked out how to get them onto here yet! It was a fantastic night – the cafe was jam packed with audience! And there was a rich variety of poetry types there, the diversity of works being read gave the event a strong vibrancy and I discovered some poets I hadn’t heard before.

The next one is in October which I shall be reading at 🙂

I’ve been a bit slack with my poetry recently having gotten the prose writing bug again but in the new year I should have a poetry collection coming out so watch this space (or my poetry and music blog). Also October will see the Launch Party of The Little Book of Spoogy Poetry but more on that later!

Both of the poetry events are run by The Cheltenham Poetry Festival 🙂

This a poem I have written for my little girl Jean who is so enthusiastic she wants to take part on the next Olympics even though she will only be 10 then!

Her current plan is to work hard at Ju Jutsu which she has been doing for just over a year and to then cross train to Judo as there do not seem to be many martial arts in the Olympics.

She has just spent the morning watching the Judo and is now watching the swimming. She came up with a lot of the rhymes in this poem so it is really a joint effort.

Ju Jutsu Jean

Ju Jutsu Jean was ever so keen
To travel to London to impress the Queen
So she practiced and practiced and practiced some more
Till her muscles ached and her bottom was sore

She tried and tried
Till her mum cried
Not with sorrow but a bursting pride!

Ju Jutsu Jean the string bean
Was tall enough to be on a basket ball team
But she was kind and never mean
She washed her ghi
And made herself clean
Braiding her hair into a plated pair
And took the train to get her there

At the palace gates the guards said no
They informed Jean she would have to go
Ju Jutsu Jean turned said SO!
And with hands on hips did some back flips
And gave the guards some tips
On fighting a keen string bean called Jean

After a while
With the guards in a pile
Jean remembered her letter written in the style Roy-al
The guards groaned and opened the door
And Jean was amazed at the marble floor

In she went to see the Queen
Ju Jutsu Jean represented her team
And was awarded a medal with gleam

And so Ju Jutsu Jean the keen string bean
Beamed at the Queen
Showing off her gleam

Then she headed home once more
Were her mum had put bunting round the door
And smiled knowing there was a party in store
With food and singing and fun galore!

That moment when you’ve gone off to take one photograph and realise it is dusk, you are in a tumble down industrial area amongst broken glass and iron rods half exposed from crumbling concrete. You have £100 odd worth of camera around your neck, you’ve left your phone in the car along with you husband and kids, and worse you have no idea anymore which direction said car is in. Then just to add the icing to the cake a group of three ‘youths’ wonders into sight and you realise it was their shouting and the ring of a beer can football that pulled you out of the contemplative glaze of photo snapping bliss you had been in moments before.

You do not run as that is provocation, beside satistically you know that the middle aged man on his own that passed you at the beginning of this adventure is more likely to be a danger than three young men. Apart from some cat calls they are fine – you take another photo of graffiti and as you know they’ve seen the camera anyway and just keep walking, with confidence hoping it will come out to somewhere more populated by people. Maybe even somewhere you know.

And the monologue that is spinning in you brain is one of half remembered self defense techniques though you do not dwell on them as being afraid in the half light of urban decay is a sure way to draw attention to yourself in unwanted ways. Same goes for the crowded city streets and the apparently safe board room. You keep walking aware of your surroundings and potential escape routes, you do not avert your gaze nor do you linger.

You think, ‘This is how stupid people die,’ and then you snort with the realisation that you have nicked the quote from a TED talk you watched the night before. And that shunts your brain into thinking that it is thinking and what it is thinking about and the words Third Thoughts sneaks in and you’re like damn! Now I am quoting Terry Pratchette in the almost fear – that fear you are not feeling, that fear you are keeping at bay.

The kids are gone, they went into a side alley and now you are in territory you recognise and daydreams of pirate days with real tall ships and Christmas Fayres with real snow filter in your brain and you think – I’m actually quiet a away from the car and the quickest way is back through those buildings that now seem to loom out of the dusk.

So you again consider how stupid people die, but now you have your bearings and know the way and this way is much shorter and there is an old couple out for a walk and they might be lost but they are walking into the corroded corridor of split wood and ripped metal.

You follow and storm your way home, reasoning that you are wearing big boots and a flappy coat and yes it’s all purple and your over weight but it is probably dramatic or something.

And you still stop to take photos because things look different from this angle and hey wow that was a fantastic one of the birds flying away and it shall be called The Escape.

There is a world within worlds in this place you walk unwittingly, there are jungles and homes and hope.

And really it is only a few derilict buildings with seagulls roosting, slowly the industrial endevours of a previous centre are being consumed by the small of nature and you feel previlaged to see it all before it is ripped asunder and the new of this centery is put in it’s place. Clicking the button on the camera you try and capture just a little bit of the awe.

I found this post and pictures on my personal blog it was the 3rd Tech Adventure in Bristol at the Trinity Centre. I think back in 2009.

I thought I’d share it here as there is poetry and robots!:)

This one I got up at 6 am for and me and Al were wending our way to Bath by 7 am – why Bath I here you cry when it is in Bristol? The answer lays in the fact we have a van and that we had volunteered to help the organisers this time.

So we arrived after only a minor getting lost incident and begain loading the sound equipment and assortments of other tech gear.

We drove to Bristol with our navigator and then after a quick unload headed off to pick up John Honniball who has an amazing collection of old computers which I somehow failed to take a photo of 🙁 He also had a cool bubble car outside his house!

Oh and I had had to try and repair my glasses and had managed to cover about 30% of my hands with superglue – I was not a happy bunny.

The exhibits themselves where fun and I think I’ll need to do some seperate posts for some of them plus I have vidoes I need to sort out of them.

There was a motion sensitive BB gun, with a targeting laser.

Guys with hand controlers that meant they could produce sound from motion resulting in me wanting to play with the concept and come up with a theatre production :/

Me reading Geek poetry and giving away Wiggly Pets to those who counted the correct number of programming languages in my poem.

The cutest robot ever which behaved like an animal, the camera looking like a little hamster nose and which maybe good research for a book me and dad are writing 🙂 Just a little fun fiction.

There was a random pirate duck but then what sort of event is complete without a mascot?

A 3D printer which had me @ndy who we dragged up from London, and Alaric all got very excited about.

Here are some of the things it made! It can make parts of itself too which is kinda cool 🙂 I really really want one for various craft applications.

There was a Wii set up, more old computers with ancient games on, a logic puzzels and game table, a swap shop which seemed to mainly consist of things we had brought with us – of which fortunatly all but one thing went from, DJ dudes, people with guitars and filming equipment.

Of course Andy got roped into cabling without even being asked if he was a tekki!

Plus there was a talk on high performance from computers – by a guy who was there last year – I ended up actually asking questions and talked to him afterwards – I feel this definatly deserves its own post however!

Alaric’s Chicken Scheme T-shirt arrived just in time for him to wear it for tech adventure which he was really chuffed with – again somehow I failed to take a photo – sigh!

Gone from me
And from us
Gone from your family
From the girl you loved
Just gone

A tear shaped whole
Is at my core
My heart beats irregular
A tear, a hole
Where part of me
Went with you

At the writing classes I used to go to we did a combination exercise – we had to write about how we viewed our selves as writers starting with I believe. I found out some very interesting stuff about myself during this excercise and it was part of the realisation that I really want to be writing pop sci and bringing knowledge to the masses via scientific poetry and art if nessascary. (please not I am not talking about the psuedo science that I hear spewed at alot of peotry evenings)

I believe I am not a writer

I believe I am a story teller

I believe I am an information conveyer

I believe I am an ideas creator, cemetor

I believe I am a scientist

I believe I am rationally irrational

I believe I am a frontier Finder

I believe I am an explorer of words

I believe I am a bridge between

I believe I am an embodyment of the duality of science and art

I believe I am dyslexic

I believe I am frustrated

I believe this leads to creation, adaption, and the sideways evolution that is known as lateral thinking

I believe I am bound to the earth in its intercasies of systems I love to explore

I believe I am cut free and floating in celebral space where the concept of super novae roam

I believe I am the colour purple, unique in my colour spectrum, 2 colours superimposed

I believe I am hurtling through life faster than I can handle

I believe this is inspiration

I believe I am a contradiction

I believe I like this

I believe I am jack of all trades

I believe I am more than the sum of these words

Seagulls

Soaring, roosting, perching

Above, in, on

Hospital peaks

City stretching

Inside Self

Fully contained

But the seagulls

Show hills

Disappearing mist

Blankets – clouds

Blue sky peeps

Monolith old

Religious relic

Dominates domiciles – weak

Hills wrap landscape

Steel giants

March endless

Communication

Gulls wings black – white

Strip

Eyes look

Me – glass cage

Concrete prison

Needles sharp

Machines bleep

Time stretched

Monotony beige

Thread-bare blanket

Yellow, Blue, Teal

Beyond flight

Trees puffed

Green, red luminous

Spring summer

Calling

Trapped, tagged

Stare

Seagulls, swallows

Night crisp air

Window ajar

My world

I am somehow there

This poem originoally appeared on my personal blog here.

Thursday the 12th of July last year saw me at the Grain Barge performing geek poetry, throwing knitting and inflicting my sense of humour on people. It took me a while to remember to post it! But it was an epic night and I did pop it up on my personal blog before but thought it should be shared here!

We turned up and there was some classical science equipment set up – which is always ‘ooooo do you think there will be fire and explosions and glowing stuff?’.

The show got started with the comedic Steve proclaiming he had super powers – he the guy who organises and entertains between the acts.

The first act was Jim Bell with his spiders which the brave Suze who is very scared of them, managed to hold momentarily with lots of squeaking.

Then it was time for the fire and glowing stuff but alas no explosions 🙁

Then it was on to Sophia with her set on why parents are so annoying.

At some point a red nose appeared just to remind me that Clowns exist shudders

Then we had Joe Wright and a very funny sketch and video about Darwin – including all the mistakes in the video 🙂

Then we had Nicole Slavin and opera about STIs.

We then had a break were instead of talking to the people who had come to see me I was hovering waiting for a laptop to work so that my first power point in 6 yrs could be shown and to make it worse it wasn’t actually a power point :/

But then we had the Science of Cocktails and me being me I announced to the room that I like the frothy head :/ Which Suze who was doing the talk gracefully sailed over.

Then there was Sam Phippen with his funny stories of Robots that kids build.

Then there was me – I was so nervous

Here is the video

And yes I corpsed and yes I got flustered and yes someone nicked my knitted bucky ball!

Then we had a talk on Viruses!

And then to finish off we had the halarious nerd rock of Mark Lewney.

Back in the autumn….

Via Centre Arts I met a lovely lady called Jenna Monroe who is a fantastic singer. I had wanted to do a workshop she was running but it was canceled so I have been on the look out for anything else she does. I can’t afford singing lessons at the moment but one off workshops are just about doable especially as I still had the money left from the first attempt.

The actual workshop was Vocal and Physical Improvisation with Jenna doing the vocal part and a man called Adam Fotheringham doing the physical part. I found the physical bit a tad taxing and had to sit out for large chunks which was a shame as I didn’t get to ‘let go’ of inhibitions and things in the same way as alot of the others could. I dare not jump with my pelvis still though I managed a lot and took part in all the ‘acting’ type exercises.

It was a lot more New Agey than I was expecting but that was good in some ways as it helped relax me into stuff which of course is the point of it. I have come away with some wonderful ideas for poems and stories and pictures to render. For me the best bit was an exercise were we all started off singing one thing and then other bits were added and we just sort of had to decide what we wanted to sing. I struggled with this right up until she told us to close our eyes, suddenly singing was easy, suddenly the sounds were there as ribbons around me and I could see where my ribbon, my voice needed to be woven into the pattern (metaphor obviously). It was the same a singing to the girls, there was nothing other than the sound and the hum and the harmonics of the voices mingling and mixing.

When we had finished this exercise I felt really serene and happy to take part in the rest of the activities. I had been very nervous about going to it to be honest. Later on there was another vocal exercise where we lay on the floor and then took it in turns to wander around the room singing. There was some real tribal, old, folky stuff coming out and then I got up and sang the first thing that came into my head and as I was confronted by a dark room with people laying down I just automatically started singing the Lullaby I made up for Jeany and that me and Al sing to the girls still.

I felt I learnt a lot and it was a fun afternoon, the activities when on a bit too long for my staying in one postition pain threshold but it was worth it 🙂

As I was singing the sun was setting and the sky was lavender and pink tinged, the light coming into the room had been amazing all day with trees autumn leaves fluttering down, first in sunlight, then in winter cloud glow and then through a condensation haze that settled on the windows like snow flurries. I eat cake and drank tea and at the end before the lights were switched on I took a photo of the candle that had been the only light as the sun set – I just thought it looked excellent and yes my head was very Bill and Ted when I emerged.

Being nervous and sky these sorts of workshops are invaluable to me. I am finding myself increasingly on stage and though two years ago if I went to read I was the best stage presence (not the same as the best poet!). I am now going to event where I am the worst performer (not the same as worst poet! Not that I really feel poetry can be gaged like that) and I have always wanted to sing on stage. I miss singing in Choirs and Musical Theatre Society etc…

I really enjoyed it plus I discovered there is a cute dinky little hall hidden away in Painswick.

I decided it was time to get some postcards and stickers made, I used moo.com which isn’t the cheapest but is the most accessible for what I wanted plus they had a sale!

I needed stickers for the Poetry Writing Challenge I am running and then I needed postcards for the Science-Art Exhibition I was running at Centre Arts in March, plus I wanted to give little copies of my Inspira pictures to friends who were struggling with various things in their lives.

I have been over the moon with them – people have been saying I should be selling them but not entirely sure where to do that for best affect at the moment.