The first Sunday of every month currently sees an event called Art Tournament in Gloucester’s The New Inn (note I live in the UK!). I have been going along and performing at these events which are much fun January’s one was near my birthday so was hijacked as a birthday outing – sadly I was also moving that weekend so it was curbed some what ie we couldn’t stay till the end which is a shame as the event contains acts from all over the country.
It is music, comedy, spoken word etc… an eclectic mix and friendly atmosphere. I really love going to them 🙂 There is a video currently on their website of the November event – the sound track to which is the beautiful Rebecca Cant singing but there is also a moment where you can see me reading (looking very like a primary school teacher :/ the following event I wore my flashing corset!).
The knock on affect of these events is that I now perceive an audience for my more performance type pieces and so have actually been writing more of them. Creativity breeds.
Maybe one day I’ll have the courage to perform one of my songs at such an event but until then I shall just keep inflicting my poetry upon people.
I actually have no idea if anyone else is doing this poetry challenge this year – but I did it last year and it helped me get a good poetic start to the year and to be honest I need to keep going with the poetry. I have lots of kids poetry I want to write – I have sort of actually swamped myself with it.
The Little Books are multiplying! The Little Books of Poetry are something that started a few years ago when my little girl wanted us to write some spoogy halloween poems – the fact she couldn’t pronounce spooky at the time just sort of sparked something and I produced a little book in an afternoon with about six poems in it. Since then I’ve made lots more some and have written and not edited even more. Realising how many poems I had I thought of the idea of The Big Books of Poetry which contain 100 poems rather than the 10.
This idea had me and what with all the writing challenges I’d done last year I actually do have enough to do this. So I am working these Little/Big Books of Poetry including illustrations. That is what this years month of poetry (MoP) is going to be about and then I will probably us WoPoWriMo to try and clear my head of kids rhymes 🙂 You can follow the Books on my illustration and childrens’ stories blog Orange Monster.
1) Get The Little Book of Festive Poetry released in print, audio and e-book
2) Do the same for The Little Book of Olympic Poetry but before the Olympics actually start
3) Do poetry challenges:
– Month of Poetry (Jan) MoP
– World Poetry Writing Month (Feb) WoPo
– National Poetry Writing Month (April) NaPo
– National Poetry Day UK
– Slam the Atom
4) Take the poetry dragon to more schools and festivals
5) Finish making the poetry bees and their tree
6) Finish the gamma test on the Monster Writing Game to use for workshops
7) Sort out the poetry section of my site to be The Glass Pelvis
8) Finish the publication of Turquoise Monster: A Poetry Collection
9) Go through all note books and type up and edit poems that are lurking
10) Create a Science and Technology Collection
And of course I will be reading at as many events as I can get to!
For me 2011 has been caught up with the wonder and new challenges of an extra member of our family – born at the end of January she like her sister is already a subject and inspiration of many children’s poems. Of which The Little Book of New Baby Poetry was the first of Many. Add in the issue of having to find somewhere else to move into – somewhere were I felt I could still be creative and it would seem like I wouldn’t have a lot of chance to focus on poetry but this has not been the case.
Instead I have found myself increasingly being asked to take part in poetry events, have finally produced The Little Book of Festive Poetry complete with illustrations and the like (this year only the special handmade editions have been avaliable – next year there will be print, ebook and audio avaliable and do not panic yes it has been edited and my dreadful spelling sorted out!). I am being booked for workshops and festivals. I managed to win a prise from ESA for my visual and poetic piece Celestial Montage.
True I never got around to sending poems off for publication but that somehow doesn’t seem to have mattered overly this year. The things I am sad about is that my poetry collection (as in the main collection not kids) has been put on a back burner but is something along with the Monster Writing Game that will be resurrected.
The main thing that I achieved this year though is closure and through the medium of poetry. When I had my first little girl just about everything went wrong and I ended up in hospital for weeks on end during the pregnancy and then in a wheelchair. And though the mobility issues have returned they are not so bad and have not been made worse by life threatening conditions. After my second was born via planned c-section the ease of it allowed me to finally think over the horror that was labour and write a poem I have called The Warrior Butterfly. I still can not read it out loud without choking up and doubt I will ever be able to read it at an event though I may try just for completeness. I have registered a domain as well were I plan to put all my poems about pregnancy and coping with the issues of a bad labour and living with a separated pelvis.
I consider that my poetry and art have become my career in the last two years and that this has bascially ramped up from the time I had my first child. Locked away in the horror of what had happened, finding out how close me and the baby had both come to dying and the isolation of finding myself in a Cotswold village away from all my family and friends, the career I was making an excellent start in ripped from my hands by medical issues – all of this had to be expressed but I could not talk of it not out loud at least so I turned to the other obsessions I had – not science, not climbing, not parties and found that those poems and doodles at the edge of my class notes through college had something.
I was being published before I was 18 so surely? Surely I could again? But it always seemed to be a bit naff a bit – people saying ‘writing? painting? oh yes I suppose you’ve got to do something with your time’.
I consider the Warrior Butterfly to be the most important poem I have ever written – not because it is great but because it marks the point at which the fear stopped choking. And writing – well that is what gave me enough courage to have another child. And I feel that I want to share my poems as much as possible – they help me, they may help others, they may just amuse for a while. I’ve had year of life changes mainly that I now say I was a geologist and now I am an Artist and Writer.
This is a video of me reading The Little Book of Festive Poetry which I wrote a few years ago as part of the PiBoIdMo challenge. I was asked to read at The Brewery Cheltenham as part of a fund raiser for Winstons’ Wish organised by Cheltenham Poetry Festival.
In the video Jean my 6 yr old daughter is inching her way towards me to join me on the stage – as were several other children 🙂 The coughing is because Alaric my husband is recovering from having fluid on his lungs – not sure he should have been outside but he was bored of resting!
I am making limited editions of of The Little Book of Festive Poetry, for my family and friends. There will only be 100 made with had decorated covers. Here are the pages all waiting to be put together, I will have some undecorated ones with me when I do various readings in the hope of selling a few to raise money for books for my little girls school library.
This post probably belong on Orange Monster but I’m in a very Christmassy mood so it is going on here – I have had the idea of producing several picture/story books that are long poems. The first is based on an advent calendar and I have a substantial part of it written already, the next is a story of twelve days of christmas and third is about christmas eve, christmas day and boxing day.
It is a challenge when writing long poems not to force the rhyme (children do notice) and to not just do the same rhythm all the time as it grows stale and old quickly. So that is basically taking up my poetry brain this side of Christmas – hope you all have a good one – I’m go back to my mulled wine and story telling through rhyme.
Last year I finally scanned and began editing the poems I’d written the previous year as part of the PiBoIdMo challenge. I then printed them and the poems and glued the poems onto the pictures having an iffy laptop that wouldn’t let me do much at the time.
I then gave these and tonnes of christmas stickers to my little girl who decorated the thing within an inch of it’s life – I’d stuck the front and back covers onto green mounting card and the whole lot was whole punched so that I could tie them together with ribbon as the binding.
This was The Little Book of Festive Poetry Mark 1 – this year there is a Mark 2 which has involved rescanning and editing poems and working out spacings and the like and generally been far more work though is a prelude to publishing properly for next christmas!
