Turquoise Monster

This Friday I am going to be reading my poetry and depending on how brave I’m feeling maybe some of my sort of rap/performance geek poetry at the Frog and Fiddle . It costs about £4 to get in I think and on top of that there is A F Harold who is well worth a watch for his interesting poems (I’m not biased because he used one of my cats names in his Tweet Poetry for the Cheltenham Lit Festival honest!). There is also Men Diamler and Brown Torpedo who I have been meaning to blog about for ages and have like photos of performances and stuff but haven’t gotten round to yet!

Men Diamler is what I think of as a sort Nick Cave / White Strips mix with a dark middle English ring to it. He weaves fantastical and often tragic tails in his music and yes I am a fan 😉

Brown Torpedo are erm… well the only way I can think of describing them off the top of my head is, I suppose – Trippy with that sort ethereal swerl allowing dreams of the present day – or something Simon from Uni would make us all listen too and then tell me they don’t exist and I imagined them the next day!

I have achieved 100 posts – not all poems it is true but still I feel this is an occasion for celebration and I am offering one copy of my Monster Writing Poetry Game to the funniest limerick about writing. It has to be your own work and be allowed to be placed on this website – though you retain copyright.

Leave them in the comments section below – you have until next the end of the month!

Good luck!

I really wanted to do a Little Book this year but was too tied up with things to do an Easter/Spring one and I didn’t want to do another lot of Halloween poems when I haven’t got round to making the first one properly! So instead I have gone for poems about Fireworks Night or Guy Forks or Bonfire Night.

I’m going to be documenting the poems and book construction over on my illustration/kidlit blog Orange Monster.

There will be ten poems and illustrations and I hope my now 5 year old child likes them!

Science is vital the scientist said
The politicians just shook their heads
And smiled oh so very primly
they knew what’s best they said rather grimly

Science is vital the teacher cried!
The politicians shrugged and simply lied
The way they had done before
Is telling the truth such a chore?

Science is vital the nurse intoned
The politicians thought it – just another funding moan
Even with their private health care plans
They failed to see what drove – those cancer scans

Science is vital the cleaner shouted
The politicians just looked at money and counted
Forgetting to take in the longer view
Thus knotting the financials into a thornier stew

Science is vital the artist sang
The politicians ignored them till the world went bang
Or did at least for an island at the edge of the world
Crushed and broken is societal whorls

Slowly it crumbled to the sea
A brain drain leaving it’s people be
Without the intellectual resources to save themselves
This is what historians will see once they delve

A people derelict and poverty stricken
Science is vital
Why did they not listen?

http://www.nationalpoetryday.co.uk/

National Poetry Day is here once more and this time the theme is Home – here is the poem I constructed from this concept:

My home is not this building
With it’s antiquated beams
And spiders in the loft
It is not the garden strewn
With fruit and edibles
Nor is it the burbling stream
That pours over
Idyllic cotswold stone

My home is not the red doored house
Where I grew up
It is not the cracked pavement beyond
It is not the dens we built
In splintered trees out of wardrobe doors
It is not the fishing for golf balls
In the leach ridden river
Nor is it the games of hopscotch
Or the misty nights of bonfire parties

My home is not
The Edwardian town houses
Brimming with students
Finding their way in the world
It is not the common room
With pool table and
Endless Simpsons re-runs
Nor is it eating Hargen Daas ice-cream
At three in the morning
Whilst discussing philosophy
And finding solutions to all the worlds woes

My home is my family
A place where friends come to chat
It is the feeling that envelops the place
The tangle of memories shared
Without us – a house is just bricks and mortar
We are the home
And as such
I can never be homeless
I am lucky

In the beginning I was a new pack of plasticine
All rainbow colours in neat rows
But People took pieces of me
And began molding me as they thought I should be
My Parents
Teachers, doctors
Neighbours, the Church, friends,
Bullies and boyfriends
Each made an effigy
That was not me
Just a distorted fraction of self
And then each grew bored
Became annoyed at my ill fit
They grew angry
Mashing those fractions
That did not fit with their world view
Leaving me formless
Grey

Disappointed, they all finally went away
Leaving me a mess
No identity, no existence
Just a sense I had let them all down
But then you came along
And saw the faint rainbow swirls
Like oil on the surface
And you asked how I wanted to be molded
And said it did not matter that I couldn’t choose
I’m still malleable
But it’s put to a different use
You call it adaptable
And build me scaffolds
For the larger forms I wish to take

I was planning to produce the Little Book of Spoogy Poetry properlly this year but unfortunatly my little girl poured water all over it 🙁 Fortunatly I had copies of the actual poems but I lost the drawings as I hadn’t thought to scan them before I put the book together for Jeany.

However – all is not lost as I had taken photos of the drawings! However I will have to completely trace and tidy these up in some drawing type programme – which will take me and an age 🙁 Hopefully I’ll have it done before actually Halloween. This does mean that it probably wont be ‘on sale’ this year and will just be for Jeany.

I know some of you want to buy a copy so I am sorry about that but you will just have to wait!

Selfish human consumption
Depleting natural resources
Carrying extinction
Disguised as advancement

I have decided that it is time to put together a poetry collection – it will contain 50 poems from this blog. It will be the first 50 minus the poems that I consider just for children so mainly the Little Books of Poetry.

It will be avalable as an e-book, a printed leaflet and a booklet with handmade cover – I haven’t run the costings of this yet though so can not give you any prices but I doubt it will be very much to be honest!

Here are the Poems that are going into it 🙂

1) A Picture of Words
2) The Maiden’s Dream
3) Chaos
4) Dyslexic Thinking and the Origin of Thought
5) Galactic Death Throes
6) Hopscotch
7) The Programmer’s Lament
8) Xmas Shopping
9) The Echo
10) The Baby Wocky
11) Flame/Candle
12) Seeds
13) Ingredients
14) Mixing things up!
15) Which Direction?
16) Neptune is Bound
17) Spirits of Trees
18) Small Showers
19) Cataracts
20) Scandal Vanished
21) Balance
22) Clothed
23) Fairy Tale
24) Inspiring Weather
25) Companionship
26) First time Camping
27) The Date
28) City Walk
29) A childs story
30) Dark Geometry
31) The Bust
32) Fantasy Worlds
33) The Thermodynamics of Coffee
34) These Treasures or as the mundane call them Sweet Wrappers
35) Occassions
36) Two Tudors – Sisters
37) Texture
38) Sunday’s Moon
39) The Music
40) Sudden
41) Debill – A Protest Poem
42) Discordant Pattern
43) Solitary Reflections
44) Solitary Reflections
45) My Ensuing Death
46) Beginning
47) Lemons
48) A Case for the GMC
49) Ice
50) Enunciating Sound Bites

I have also omitted the visual poems for this collection. Solitary reflections contains two poems which is why it appears twice in the list!