The theme this year is Games because of the Olympics this year – I thought it would be a good idea to write lots of poems on the theme and have gotten a bit carried away – they are all for kids and there is at least one Little Book in there. One thing though I am going to try and remember it sooner in 2012 so that I can have a nice ready poem for the blog!
Progress of the Olympic poems will be found on Orange Monster which is where all the kids and illustration stuff ends up.
There are some really cool things there for you to touch and feel and an interactive braille table to boot!
Here are a few sneak peaks but you can not know the majesty of these pieces without actually going and feeling them!
The exhibition has been put together with the blind and visually impaired in mind and as such bright vibrant and therefore easier to see colours have been used in some of the pieces and there is also a bueatiful light sculpture.
Then we come to my piece – the giant coral I have been working on for what seems like forever!
Which I set up last night 🙂 Complete with beads for the molecular sand! There are also MP3s of some of my poems that I felt where a good counter point to the visual/textural piece there to listen too 🙂
Basically I have been learning the guitar for a year – this is me at home with books – I did have some guitar lessons during my GCSE’s which was half a lift time ago now. It was about a years worth and as my coordination and musical knowledge were pretty bad at the time the poor teacher spent most of the lessons trying to teach me rhythm and how to hold the guitar without dropping it.
Hence I am quiet proud of what I have achieved in a year around small children and giving birth and what not. I have been working on various things – my husband got me two children’s guitar books which I have steadily been working my way through. One is Christmas Carols and one is nursery rhymes – this turned out to be an important move as part of the problem I’d had when trying to play the guitar before was that I was trying to play stuff that was technically advance and way out of a beginners league.
The other thing has been I have made the music part of the family life – I practice the guitar reguardless of if others are in the room, the guitar was moved from the bedroom where I would sneak off to try and play once every few months (generally just after a musical friend who could tune it had visited) to it being down stairs and easily got to. I allocated a space on our units for my guitar books and plectrums and also a tuner! This has made things so much different for me to the point that I am happy to show my little girl basic guitar. I had previously been trying to tune it from a piano over the road belonging to our landlady and aunt in law but it never sounded right (turns out the piano is out).
For my 30th birthday celebration I have been given the complete beatles cord book and a silver engraved plectrum as well as a multitude of other musical themed things – I had decreed that my 30’s would be musical – I have done five – six years with no choir, no musical theatre etc… and I really can not live like that.
Anyway I decided to video me playing various things and put them up but my husband pointed out that my song There’s a Boy Over There would work as it shows most of what I can do (badly and the singings iffy too!). So here it is and please bare in mind a small person is hugging my foot throughout – you can probably detect the point at the beginning when they moved in with grabby little hands! The video has also got a weird jarring artifact in the middle – no idea what caused that. The clipping is because it is being recorded straight onto the laptop with no external mic and the similar effect in the visuals is because it is a laptop camera!
The first of my songs I recorded was the first half of a song I wanted to sound like medival babes but then I found ambient voice which adds echos and with some chopping of bits of the song etc… created the dance-ette version.
I like it though it is basically a remix even though I haven’t yet recorded all of the original!
The main two workshops I am offering are the Poetry Dragon which has appeared in the local newspaper and Muse Monsters. Both of these offer a handicraft as well as writing activity for those partaking.
Poetry courses for children will be running from September at Centre Arts in Cheltenham – I believe there are still currently spaces on the courses if you wish to book your child in (you need to be in the local area for these).
More workshops are in the making and I will let you know of them as soon as I have tried and tested them 🙂
Back at the beginning of the year I did a song writing challenge with the aim of writing one song a day (or more writing down and sorting out ones I’d been making up). Then in the spring I went to a song writing workshop organised by the Cheltenham Underground with Paul Murphy – this was excellent and really installed me with a sense that I could do something with my songs.
I have since been working on them, I have guitar sorted for one song and half another worked out.
In the last week I have discovered recording software on the laptop I am using and have recorded, mixed and released songs on Bandcamp – you can buy the tracks if you want with buyer sets the price but they are mainly there so I can get feed back.
Dear friend, I love you
But I am only free to say so
As you are gone forever
And I am married
So finally
I say
I love you
I should have told you
But held my council
And then things where never in the right places
To say
And I could not
For fear of rejection
For fear of friendship lost
I should have told you
That first day
I should have screamed it
To the clouds
Then you would have laughed
And kindly turned me down
And our class would have laughed with scorn
And I would have drifted away free
And friendship would have been awkward
Then severed
And I would not be here
With a breaking heart
I wouldn’t be feeling this pain
Wouldn’t have to tell my husband
The way I feel
As he holds me close and treats me gently
I love him more
But was that only circumstance?
Saturday ie tomorrow I will be doing a quick poetry reading in the Waterstones in Cheltenham with some fantastic other poets (it’s a quick one as I’m running away to a family wedding!). This event is organised by the Cheltenham Poetry Festival who have been putting on some fantastic events through out the year. The readings in the Waterstones are going to be the first Saturday of each month 11-2pm.
Another event that they are running is Poetree in the Park – the last one got in the news paper along with a cute picture of Jean holding up a poetry dragon 🙂
I’m going to be running an number of workshops and courses mainly for kids for the Festival and the new Center Arts in Cheltenham on top of the craft workshops I do for festivals anyway 🙂 They are also holding an Exhibition in Braille in September which I hope to have a textural art piece in (made of papier mache of course!).
On top of that I hope to have the poetry book sorted soon and also take the Monster Writing Game to the next level. I do however need more outlets for my art work – I may get an exhibition soon but I need to be in shops and stuff more than doing craft fairs each Sunday. The trouble with that I’ve been finding is that you have to spend money out in the first place to buy shelf space very few places do it on commission. I would also love as I think I mentioned about three years ago now :/ to become a member of the Gloucester Guild of Craftsmen but again it takes money and I am still only braking even as I am still building up my equipement and stocks at the moment.
I will confess to having gotten carried away with making educational games and designing crafts to help the kids engage in writing workshops but I finially feel I am heading in the right direction here 🙂
Oh and also some of my local kids poetry is going to be on display at the village Flower Festival this weekend which is well just lovely 🙂
