So It Goes (by sarah)

Last night I went to a truly inspiring event - So It Goes by the Cheltenham Improvisers Orchestra at the Cheltenham Poetry Festival.

Sound rippled around the room, building and echoing and fading away to almost nothingness, reminding me of the psychedelic of previous decades mixed with the fragments of poems building up to create a picture of the stretching endless existence.

Pictures of the cosmos played in the back ground and occasionally across on of the performers leaving a silhouette of them, stark in the nebula.

I could have closed my eyes and just listened creating pictures for stories and the like but then I would have missed the spectacles of how they produced some of the sounds - vibrating, glowing massage spider on a balloon for example.

I had great fun taking photos again hence the black and white - I also played around with long exposures to see if I could get an image that captured the essence of the music.

When I spoke to the poets afterwards it turned out they didn't know who was going to read when - this was interesting as the poets seemed to pick up and continue with the style of the previous poet but adapted to them - as if their was an invisible creative string connecting them within the performance.

I really loved this event and could have easily spent all of last night writing - I took quiet a few arty shots:

Poets including Anna Saunders, Adam Horovitz, and Sara-Jane Arbury to name but a few.

Knitted Poem – The Price of Art in Luton (by sarah)

Yesterday I went back into Cheltenham to photograph some more of the events at the Cheltenham Poetry Festival which was brilliant! But before they started I popped over to the Waterstones to see the knitted poem that Centre Arts has had all the local knitting groups taking part in. The poem is The Price of Art in Luton from the John Hegley - part of the Dog collection.

There is also has a knitted homeless guy and his dog on it.

I believe it is being auctioned off at the end of the festival! Alaric being from Luton examined the poem more closely - though in my opinion from the wrong angle!

War of the Words (by sarah)

Last night I went and performed in my fourth ever poetry slam - this time it was War of the Words at the Cheltenham Poetry Festival. As typified by the other slams I came last but I am happy as I performed my best yet in my opinion. I did my poem Shy about selective mutalism and had many people including the other poets commenting on how good it was. There is a very graining video which I want to edit into something at the end of the festival - but here is the recording I did of the poem using the hammond organ last year.

There were some absolutely amazing performers last night including Spoz, Peter Wyton and Ben Norris.

War of the Words (by sarah)

Saturday (20th April 2013) will see me taking part in the Cheltenham Poetry Festival Slam! It takes place at Copa in Cheltenham and is £7 or £5 for concessions.

I am desperately trying to memorise some newer poems for this! If anybodies about came and see some fantastic poets (not me the other guys!).

Lojbani Chicken or jbojipci (by sarah)

Just before we moved to the new house I came up with the idea of Lojbani Chicken, a character who would help Jean or anybody else understand and learn Lojban but I wanted it to be more than that. I wanted some sort of all languages web-comic thing which is obviously very complex and so it never happened - there were some biro sketches in the back of a note book and that was that.

Then I saw this year is Lojban's 25th and so I sat down and revisited the idea of my chicken. The result was more biro sketches and Mother Lang and her two daughters Coni and Nat, they live on a farm where Lojbani chicken is one of the animals.

A full first story will hopefully be appearing on Wiggly Pets soon 🙂

Once the image above is digitally edited (this is just what I russeled up using my new birthday pens and colouring pencils.) there will be speech bubbles saying such things as fi'i - meaning welcome.

Other existing characters include Esperanto Cat and Toki Pona kitten. I haven't decided yet what creatures should represent any of the natural languages - mainly due to worrying about offending people :/ I might do something like have made up creatures for natural languages and real animals for the constructed languages - suggestions welcome 🙂

I am hoping to produce some more of the characters as part of the 100 birds in 100 days challenge I am currently doing over on Orange Monster.