Poetry Cafe 2 (by sarah)

During the Literature Festival there was a fringe event called Poetry Cafe held at the Museum and Art Gallery in Cheltenham and I was reading!

Due to competition from other events it wasn't as well tended as the first one in September but I ended up going back up to read twice! That is two more times after my initial reading 🙂

I also bumped into someone I hadn't seen for a while who was very excited as he has 'always loved my work' 🙂 and got even more excited when I pointed out I now had a poetry blog.

I read:

The Markov Chains of Literature

A Little Chaos

The Break-Up

I Want

The Baby-Wocky

Poetry Monster a.k.a. Turquoise Monster (by sarah)

With National Poetry Day Yesturday I thought it was time to finially launch my Poetry Blog it is in fact another Monster - this time Turquoise Monster who is a Bardic Rhymerian Monster 🙂

Anyway just thought I'd let you all know that Turquoise exists 🙂

Hero Poem by Jean (by sarah)

Today is National Poetry Day Uk and with giant knitted poems and a flock of fun events around the place I thought I'd get Jean to write a poem on the theme.

This is it 🙂 :

Super hero!

Super man

Doctor

Nanowrimo, The Universe and Everything… (by sarah)

I have a tone of photos and half written posts pertaining to the last month and a half which hopefully will be finding their way to going live soonish - but no promises!

I have decided to try and get back into the swing of things after this years medical stuff and random illnesses and so have signed up to do NaNoWriMo this year.

This stands for National Novel Writing Month and I was going to do it last year but what with the MRes course work and stuff I never even got started.

This was a shame as I had a lovely idea which I hope to go back at some point and make an actuality. This year I have forced the issue by actually signing up on the forum and getting myself writing buddies who will help me write!

The idea of nanowrimo is to write 50, 000 words in a month - that month is November - so why am I writing about this now? At the beginning of October?

Becuase I have already spent several weeks planning out what I want to do this year - I have a title - The Punk in Pink and am in the process of trying to sort out exactly what I want the story to be!

I am documenting the entire nanowrimo process as Purple Monster and will have the novel up there as well!

Poetry wise - things are moving forward - with my work starting to appear in anthologies and being invited to preform my poetry.

I have also taking part in an art project across the pond but more on that later - no I'm not going out there :(.

MRes wise I've asked to drop down to the diplomer and am still awaiting a response - I still want to do a PhD and stuff but I think realistically its got to wait.

Nanowrimo is away to get me doing things again with no pressure - if I failing to meet the deadline it really doesn't matter but if I do meet it then I'll have a good chunk of a novel (not that I've done anything with the previous novel I've written :/).

October is going to be me planning stuff for the novel and researching the bits that need researching - funnily enough it involves alot of geology 🙂

I'm also going to go into the school to talk to the kids about dinosaurs and research techniques which should be fun 🙂

Poetry Cafe Launch (by sarah)

Yesturday I headed in to Cheltenham to take part in the Poetry Cafe Launch at the Museum and Art Gallery in Cheltenham.

The guest poets where:

Angela France

Who interesting read out a poem called the Bisley Boy which is a local legend which I may nick for my NaNoWriMo this year (more on that later!). This was from her poetry collect called Occupations - I think she's also doing the Literature Festival this year and she runs another poetry things that I've been trying to find out about called Buzz Words.

Brenda Read Brown

This Dudette has been winning slams and actually almost made me cry with her poem about a prisoner from her work in prisons. Her work was mostly humerous though - what I think is termed Slam Poetry - hence winning the slams I assume!

Peter Wyton

I really like Peters poems - he was at Earshot too and I think he did a Stanza Room Only a few years ago. I had a long conversation with him about niche poetry last Thursday which was very helpful for me.

I read Ice and A Picture of Words.

I've read both at Earshot in the past - last time I read A Picture of Words I was accusted by an English teacher asking if she could have a copy of it to work with in class (she also teaches maths). And basically the same thing happened to me last night, resulting in me being on of the last to leave the building.

Outside I tracked down one of the poets I wanted to get Live Journal contacts from as she's moving. Then somehow I ended up reading poetry in the streets as people asked for more of my work and I just happened to have my entire arch lever file full of poetry on me!

I have also discovered I'm a bit odd in having an entire arch level file full of material and I haven't even typed everything up and printed stuff out yet. I haven't written much poetry in the last year but I think I do have enough material to be getting on with anyway.

I'm hoping to get involved in the poetry festival that this is a fore runner of too!

I think it went well especially as Anna told me there had been good feed back about my poems at Earshot. Apparently they are strong - not entirely sure what that means!

I did find I was a little bit paranoid about reading to the 50 poeple in the cafe - more so than the 80 odd I'd read to the week before - these were poet conasers not drunken Freshers and well they're all talking about form and structure and I just sort of smile awkardly and try not to let anyone see my printed sheets - Anna saw them last night and asked had I ment to spell fonetically :/