Turquoise Monster

I love poem a day challenges so am once again taking part in WoPoWriMo this year – that stands for World Poetry Writing Month and last year this resulted in me coming up with the Monster Writing Game (which I am still trying to finish mk 3 of so I can start selling it!).

Due to just having had a baby I am not going to be making it to any poetry meetings this month which is a shame but I am looking forward to steaming on ahead with this challenge – the main issue is that with having done MoP (Month of Poetry) last month and now having a small baby I am sort of stuck in children’s rhyme mode which I’m hoping to shake off for a while.

I am note going to put the poems straight up on here this year as it was a lot of work last year – I’m already three days into the challenge and though I have like five things written in a note book I do not have the time currently to type them all up and edit them on the fly.

I have spent this month working on The Little Book of New Baby Poetry – this is a series of poems and songs – some of them are from when Jeany was little and some I’ve made up specifically for this. It is for Jean it covers everything from Mummy’s morning sickness to nappy changing, to boring babies who none the less grow into good friends for older sisters.

I wrote most of the poems at the beginning of the month and have been working on the illustrations for the rest of the month – today Al helped me put it all together – and turn it into a PDF. He then went and got it printed in colour for me at a place called Paper Box in Cheltenham 🙂

I have a bag full of stickers and one of the pages is for Jean’s thoughts and poems. Jean loves the Little Books of poetry that I have made her in the past – this is the most ‘complete’ one and has cost the most! Both in time and money 🙂 I may put the rest of the illustrations up but I need to wash hair and make sure all is packed for tomorrow! I have pre-meds to take at 6 in the morning but hopefully by tomorrow lunch time we will be a family of four 🙂 I plan to give Jean the book and stickers when she comes to see me and the baby tomorrow afternoon!

Here are some photos of the ‘book’.

The burning mist
Cut by an icy sun
Marks the landscape
Old and opalescent
Milky translucence
Hiding the scars
Making me forget
It is tarmac
Upon which I tread
A black river
Leading to concrete caves
Angular and harsh
All is blanketed
Softened
And kind once more

This is my entry to the ESA (European Space Agency) art competition Create Your Space. If you like it you have until the beginning of February (2011) to vote for it. You vote by liking my comment on the ESA image on their Facebook page – here is the link you’ll need to tell you how to vote ;). I hope you all like it. I believe you need to “like” the page before you can vote. I am Sarah Snell-Pym and this entry is linked under the image of Christer Fuglesang’s Space Walk – it is quiet a way down their wall on Facebook.

Did Life fall into this cradle
This Earth, this home –
We now attempt to climb out of?
Or is it more than a cradle
Some crucible or potters wheel
Shaping and baking us in forms renewed?

Maybe in truth it is a bit of both
And as humanity takes its first toddler steps
We begin to see the variety that our world holds

LIFE –

Life here investigated
In case of alien brethren
Life searched for by the heart if not the mind
As the astronaut steps out into the void
For themselves, for us, for a future
A future – As yet unknown
A future for us all
As we grow too large for this world to contain
A cradle we have explored from end to end

But it is only with eyes freshly opened
To the wonders beyond
That we begin to see what we have missed
That which hides in plan sight
The beauty of our world
We seek its twins, our mirrors –
Its twisted folly of form

OUT THERE

And if we are on our own?
Then look at the wonders the search has wrought
And if we are not?
Then maybe we will truly see ourselves
For the first time

Until then the void is calling
And all these things?

These investigations
These satellites
And images –
Are our jumping off point
Our call to the unknown

Do you wonder what it will answer?

I am starting by saying I am definatly doing WoPoWriMo in February and NaPoWriMo in April! I found these two writing challenges so useful and inspiring last year 🙂 I have also found MoP (Month of Poetry) which is January – I am using this to work on my children’s poetry over at Orange Monster.

I am also going to sort a second collection of poetry out and get the next stage of the Little Books ready for publication! I would love to write a Little Book of Easter Poems this year to go with The Little Book of Spoogy Poetry, The Little Book of Festive Poetry and The Little Book of Sparky Poetry! And if that goes well maybe a second Little Book of some kind but not sure on that one.

I am also amassing enough poems that I am planning to start entering competitions and things again a bit more seriously.

There is also the Cheltenham Poetry Festival in April which I am looking forward to 🙂 I am also planning on producing some hand made visual poetry greetings cards which I may or may not sell 🙂

Hope you all have a good writing year.

Well it’s the end of the year and I didn’t achieve everything I was hoping too with my poetry but I have got several collections ready if not all published, took part in readings for Oxfam and things like the Piaf evening. Been invited to event as the guest poet and began to get invited to contribute to anthologies!

I was also a complete nut and took part in two different Poem A Day (PAD) challenges both of which I completed.

So this year has gone pretty well what with the whole now being 8 months pregnant and thinking I had food posioing which prevented me getting to alot of the events and the poetry festival I was so excited about being moved to next year – it’s gone as good as it could and I can’t ask more!

See you all in the New Year!

Nerves
Acrid spiced oil
Coconut in sweet fizz
Bile
Electric tang
Salty palpitation
Followed by
Celebration
Creamy fire
Cold on ice
Warm molten
Golden
Music thumping
Microwave pings

Sticky drab concrete cage
Laughing minions
Autonomous noise
Muffled thudding heart
Fingers grip cold glass
Smooth oily, acrid spice
Coconut fizziness
Overlays bile
Electric tanged salt
Panic shears
Crescendo found
Unbelieved
Giddy hunger sickens
Glasses clink
Malted honey burns throat
Molten warmth
Annihilation
Though incomplete

Light crystal shard
Shattered light
Absurd dream
Feeling tight
Lost touch
Lost life
Lost song

Warmth evaporated Love trapped Structural cage Growing crystal lath Pierced heart Tears stain Beyond me Beyond us

Robot butterfly

Turn leach

Tendrils reaching

Till mosquito

Injecting

Wasp sting

Bruising

Flutter away now

Please?

This poem originally appeared on my personal blog here.