The next few days are going to be amazing – starting with tonight. I shall be in Bristol at the Grain Barge performing geek poetry, throwing knitting and giving a little talk on well sciency stuff 🙂
Here is the knitting 🙂
This is part of a regular event called Science Show Off which mainly happens in London (there are also other show offs like Museum Show Off).
I have really enjoyed preparing for this – combining my poetry, craft and science.
Then this weekend there is my stint as a poetry installation at Asthall Manor in Oxfordshire. They have one of the most amazing sculpture gardens in Europe and I get to go there and read poetry to the unsuspecting 🙂 (I hope the weather is ok as I want to actually be out in the garden!).
I have my post cards and poetry cards and the like ready to see what people think of them too 🙂
I now have poetry cards for my Celestial Montage. I’m selling them for £2 each – I think they have come out great 🙂
I will have them with me on Thursday (12th of July 2012) for Science Show Off at the Grain Barge in Bristol and again at Asthall Manor in Oxfordshire on Saturday.
This speech by the writer Neil Gaimon I found extremely powerful especially for someone like me who has to do creative things to survive.
But also the fact that I have not done things the normal way and that I keep hitting barriers such as I don’t have an art degree so therefore do not count as an artist for some people. I am in a space inbetween. When I hear or read that others have not done it the normal way either it gives me hope.
Also I feel encouraged that I am not the only person who finds that trying to do projects for money fail and end up leaving you worse off than you started but the ones you do because it’s a fun idea race ahead and are successful.
He mentions the changing landscape of publishing too which for me is an emotive subject – I really think I am going to continue on my own path with my blogs and getting my own CDs printed and what have you. I have tried traditional publishing twice now and both time the company has gone bust or something similar – one still having the rights to the work I’d done so I didn’t even end up with it and worse they have not done anything with it :/
My first attempt at crowd funding has been a huge success 🙂 So I am very happy with that.
He mentions throwing bottles into the sea and then they all start coming back and you have to learn to say no. And you know – this is actually happening – though I would say I have been shouting into the void and now the echos are not only coming back but are bouncing and reflecting and propagating and I am having to turn things down! (But please still ask as I may not be doing stuff that weekend etc… or like with the Stroud Water Festival – what I was supposed to be doing may have been canceled).
I do feel a bit weird though it is just like suddenly I am this person that people know of – I’m getting pounced by people who I do not know who start chatting to me about my art (ok well this has always happened quiet alot but frequency has increased!).
It is bizar but I do feel like a fake – really? Me? That thing I made in the middle of the night? That story I wrote whilst breast feeding the baby at 5 am? The knitting I did at a festival whilst listening to my favourite local bands? That really? You like it?
It is not all positive feedback mind – one of my best friends hates my songs, I was accused at the Poetry Festival of being arrogant as my business cards say Artistic Scientist and Scientific Artist. Alaric cringes at my Wiggly Pet stories and visual puns. Performance poets see me as a page poet, page poets see me as performance or worse experimental and the artists are scared or the science part and the scientists are like ‘you have no PhD!’ and I have people ranting at me over spelling mistakes on my blogs…
But….
That is small compared to what is coming back to me at the moment. I keep thinking I’m so lucky how has this come about? But it is such a knife edge world really – I’m getting bookings now but 6 months down the line? And also it still isn’t actually making money 🙁 And what it does make tends to be for charity.
But you know people are excited about Ballads of the Scientifica and there have been requests for a Wiggly Pet book and for t-shirts with things like my Normali Tea picture on.
If you watch/listen to Neils speech he says make good art, I would change that to Get Creative.
When I tore the ligaments in my ankle and had to be flown home from a field trip in the desert I GOT CREATIVE – I made Wiggly Pets
When I found myself having nearly died, and crippled from childbirth, boiling with anger and fear – I GOT CREATIVE – I started writing a novel and so was found in a cafe by the now Cheltenham Poetry Festival Director.
When I got shingles and had to rest and give up the Master degree for the second time I found the Paleo Art community and began drawing trilobites and things.
When I was devastated about miscarriage I constructed The Punk In Pink personality.
When I was petrified of going to the hospital to have little Mary I wrote poems about that fear and about having a separated pelvis.
When we were being chucked out of our home I made a poem about how the home is not the building but the people with in.
And so on. There is an even larger list of good times and being creative but that would make this post silly long! 🙂
Basically as I have struggled to build my own serendipity funnel and have just reached my perceived tipping point and this talk resonated so strongly that it made me cry (yes I know that will be the hormones).
If you haven’t already listen to it 🙂 But most of all Get Creative!
I am mainly working on Ballads of the Scientifica at the moment. I need to get it finished to send copies to people who have generously sponsored me. But more than that I have found a science open mic night called Science Show Off which seems like exactly the sort of thing I should be reading and singing these poems and songs at. The main thing holding me back is that due to the house move I currently can not find two of the poems I really want in the collection. There is a second song for recording. I need to finish the page set ups and the images which are going with it. Also some of the recordings need a little more editing or re-doing to be honest. You can listen to what is up already:
I sang my song Flowing at Wychwood Festival at an open mic night set up by a local group so I am hoping to go along to their events. I did better this time though my voice is still trying to run away when I get up to sing in public :/
July I am going to be a Poetry Installation at Asthall Manor, I’m in the programme and everything 🙂
Then of course there are the Poet Laureate of Gloucestershire finals in August for which my name has already been given to radio stations – I’m avaliable for interviews and readings 🙂
I keep meaning to enter competitions and submit to mags and things but am finding that I am just so busy I keep missing them.
My husband looks a lot like the singer Gotye so over a half term at the beginning of the year me and my family decided to make our own video. It takes elements from Gotye’s own video for his song Somebody That I Used to know and from Walk Off The Earths cover plus I maintain that it sounds like Baa Baa Black Sheep though everyone looks at me oddly when I say this :/
This is my first attempt at making a film rather than just doing stuff to record poems and songs to share and get feedback. It is daft fun and is just done using the camera in the laptop so was very limited.
I also have permission from Goyte head quarters for the use of the sound track though shamefully I asked for it after the project was done.
My husband Alaric – is non plussed by the ‘look like Gotye’ thing – but my uncle currently isn’t speaking to us as he thinks we have afforded our new house because Alaric has been secretly in a band and has just made it big 🙂 It is strangely like a parallel universe. The first picture I ever drew of Alaric was him being a drummer which Gotye is and also I have often wondered where Al would be if he hadn’t been discourgaged with his synthersiser playing. As it is with the new house move we’ve ended up with a hammond organ which has also been used in some of my poetry recordings.
Sunday saw me dashing off to Stroud for the 40 yr celebration of the canal restoration to read poetry at the Stroud On Water Festival. I was sad I hadn’t made it on the previous days to see some of the fantastic acts but very happy to have been asked to read. We were running late so I had to dash (as fast as you can on a crutch) and leave hubby to park. I arrived and was instantly ushered up to read which was a bit nerve racking but I think I managed it ok. Then I was fed coffee, asparagus quiche and eton mess whilst watching the other poets perform.
There were the Stroud Poets and the Apologetic Poets. I have discovered that there are about four different groups of poets in Stroud. The Football Poets, The Stroud Poets, The Stroud Pamphlet Poets and the Apologetic Poets.
The Apologetic Poets did an interesting little sketch involving a wooden puppet some which I videoed which I will attempt to process later on.
The tent had a respectfully full audience including an apparent Victorian!
At the weekend I took part in the Site Festival Slam in Stroud – it was held in a lovely little venue hidden down a side ally that I didn’t even know existed.
I was very very nervous – but Marcus Moore greeted me in a friendly way and soon familiar faces from poetry readings and festivals started turning up – like Crispin Thomas and Peter Wyton and the I found myself sitting with a fellow finalist for the Gloucestershire Poet place.
I read No Wage Slave out – without taking any paper up onto the stage! And I think it actually did go better than when I have my book with me. the speed of the poem has slowed some what since I recorded it as I am no longer scared I am going to forget so I can put more emphasis on bits of it.
I didn’t get past the first round but people came over afterwards to speak to me about it which was great 🙂 I am hoping to do more slams in future and am working on memorising more of my poems.
This means I have basically four types of poetry:
Generally non rhyming serious and/or science-tech poetry
Childrens’ poetry which is mostly rhyming though some visual poetry sneaks in there and is often humorous
Visual Poetry also known as concrete poetry and is often mixed up with my visual arts – I also include mixed media poems in this category
Performance Poetry – mostly rhyming but not always and includes some of my childrens stuff, political rants, the funny bits of my science/tech poetry and the rude stuff
One thing I found funny was listening to the other poets talking about being nervous over winning – I was just nervous about getting up on stage and had I memorised other poems well enough to go on to the next rounds if that happened!
I will be performing in my first ever slam tomorrow Friday 25th of May 2012 at the Stroud Site Festival Slam run by Marcus Moore and Sara-Jane Arbury.
Though I have done lots of poetry readings, including performance poetry pieces and even run workshops on poetry, I am finding this a bit scary due to the need to have my poems memorised. My plan is to basically start with the best memorised poems and hope I don’t need to many!
I’ve had No Wage Slave memorised for a while now, followed by I Hate Race Week. I think I just about have Hopscotch memorised too. My friend who is hoping to come along really wants me to do my new poem ADHD is The Polymath Dream but though I have most of this 4 and a half minute poem memorised I am having trouble keeping the chunks in order so am not confident about it at all.
I’m being told it isn’t much different from when I had lines to learn for plays and things but I feel it is as I tended to only have a few lines at a time and other people to act as prompts around me.
Anyway we shall see 🙂
I believe tickets are £5 if anyone feels like popping by 🙂
Today is the International Day Against Homophobia – I was already working on this poem in light of all the gay marriage stuff going around. I wish I could have included more people in the poem but it was becoming unwieldy.
For Those
For those who would deny the Homosexual marriage
Let all endevours of the Gay, Leza,
Trani and Bi be struck from them
Let them not read the words of Oscar Wild
Nor the works of any literature influenced by him
Let them not use the computer of Alan Turin
Nor any technology built upon his mathematic principles
Let them not laugh at the humour of Stephen Fry
Or enjoy such intellectual witisisms as he provides
Let them not dance to the music of Elton John
Nor listen to any music inspired by such music waves
Let them not use bridges, houses or cars
Made by the queer engineer
Nor receive medial treatments
Devised by those of a questioning nature
Let them take all that is purely straight and
Hide in an enclave away from the
Human beings of this world
But most of all let them see the truth
Marriage is not about sexuality or sex
It is about love
From person to person
And back again
Let them see this and become people once more
Let marriage be about marriage
And NOT arbutary sexuality
There is also the song I wrote in response to an incase in homophobic attacks here in the UK and the hanging that are still occurring globally:
And my blog post on my Gay Pride inspired art which I also feel is relavent.
I took a video of my husband helping me with the cards for the monster writing game and made a silly video out of it. I have a bamboo flute I picked up at a festival which I used to create the background music.
