Earshot Poetry Night (by sarah)

For anyone who's are Cheltenham this evening I'm going to be reading some of my poems at Slaks Comedy Bar on the Bath Street.

The Headliners of the evening are top poetry dudes from Bristol Byron Vincent and Angie Belcher.

I've seen Byron perform before and lets put it this way - its the only time I've ever seen Alaric truelly engaged whilst listening to poetry.

I am a bit nervous as I haven't read anything since like Febuary so feel a bit rusty!

I have selected four poems as requested:

The Break-Up

Summer Sales

Ana

The Markov Chains of Literature

Out of these only The Markov Chains of Literature has been read out at an event by me namely Tech Adventure earlier this year.

Not entirely sure what the secedule is for the night or how many of the four will be read but I will have on my nice red boots (I was going to wear my glittery heels but walking Jean to school has resulted in hurting shins and clicky pelvis so thought better of it - the boots are flat no heels!).

Knitting a Giant Poem (by sarah)

I found this interesting project run by the Poetry Society to knit a giant poem - this is so cool and fits straight into the mixing things, topics, mediums up all together and seeing what you get!

They still need people to knit the blanks squares.

Rainbow Flower Party Platter (by sarah)

Below is the picture of a paint oven that me and Alaric constructed out of tin foil and lamps with the old filiment bulbs in - I have improved it since he went to London and have invoked a fan heater too.

The reason is that I have made this rainbow flower party platter centre piece and want to use it for my friends 40th birthday celebration that is happening on Saturday!

It is made of papier mache and so was a bit soggy it is a lot less soggy now and I'm hoping will hold up during the party - it is going to be a portfolio piece for me as I want to go for guild membership.

Still the result of all this is that Dad has a new best friend called Foil

When I finially get round to it I will put how I made it onto Salaric Craft. I also want to vanish it etc...

Cloud Computing (by sarah)

Being surrounded by geeks and therefore zooming in on key words when on trains or in coffee shops I began to be puzzeled by the term Cloud Computing - it seemed to me that people ment different things when they used this term and recently it has become a buzz word.

I detected three distinct meaning that where never the less interconnected and to some extent nods of how people and businesses now use computers and the internet.

So I painted this picture to represent it.

All three 'cloud computing' meanings banded to and distinct from each other.

I'll be writing a post on what the three definitions are over on Web-Empire at some point too.

London Pride Inspired Art (by sarah)

I have been working on a concept of a picture for a long time - since I was a teenager but could never get it right. Then yesturday I saw a friend's quotes as to why London Pride mattered and it sparked the desire to try and capture this picture again.

So I started painting - its not a picture about being gay or anything really that's linked to London Pride but it is about Intolerance.

Its called The Strange Fruit of Intolerance:

There is a bigger picture over on Salaric Craft along with how it was painted. The colours are a bit washed out due to me having taking the photo with flash - I'll attempt to get a better pic later.

Here are the twitter quotes that sparked it:

owenblacker: Gay Pride is important because we still don't have equality. And schoolkids (& Chris Moyles) still think "gay" is worthy as a term of abuse

scottbert: Gay Pride is important because of rising homophobia and violent attacks in East London #PrideLondon

serialseb: Gay Pride is important because lgbt people still get killed, arrested or sent to "reassignment" therapies and commit suicide

DavidWaldock: Gay Pride is also important as a way to take a stand against extremist, fascist political parties like the BNP and Tories

DavidWaldock: Gay Pride is important because there are still health inequalities faced by LGBT-types, and we deserve better. #PrideLONDON

I saw most of them as retweets but still!

As I said the picture is not about Gay Pride but it is about intolerance - and as those quotes show this is an area of great intolerance and as I have been watching this country enter a slipper slope of hate against those not percieved as main stream I felt it was time I started saying what I think and feel before we end up in a regime where this is not allowed. People do not realise how quickly a society can slip into a Nazi-esk situation do to apathy - people do not notice or bother with the little things like play ground name calling and posters up in the local boys school and then when it gets bad it is no longer safe to say anything and you end up with social scapgoats and mass murder.

So before this country slips into something like V for Ventetter I shall say what needs to be said because I am a chicken and once things are 'dangerous' I'll be as quiet as a mouse.

I am no great crusader.

The picture is full of symbolism, and is a symbol - this is going to be a long post I'm afraid!

It is called The Strange Fruit of Intolerance - during my GCSE's I had a set text called To Kill a Mocking Bird and I was so touched by this story that I kept the book and have re-read it many time. The entire book is pretty much about intolerance - most people know or see the racism in it straight away but it is full of other examples too - there is sexism, class-ism and with Boo a social recluse mental health and being just plain different is covered. The scorn of the old towards the young is also heavily featured.

I was disturbed by the out come of the American legal system in the book and so endlessly chatted about to anyone who would listen and started work on a fantasy story that was directly seeded from this noval by Mary Lee Haper.

As a result I ended up part of a team raising money for the homeless the efforts of which appeared in local newspapers and even got mentioned higher up the media chain - I also ended reading out bits I'd written about countries that still existed under totalatrian regimes earning me an evening at local church where we presented out, poetry and the like to try and raise awearness of the intolerances and inequalities around the world.

Obviously I also went to Kenya in 2000 and where I was horrified that the other young people with me discovered that street children even existed - I myself had been watching documentrys on Brizilian street children who at the time were being hunted down like animals and lived in the cities sewer systems.

When I say young I was 19.

Anyway I digress - in all of this at some point someone played me a song that wrapped itself around my heart I've only heard it once and it was from an old scratchy record - I remembered it wrongly it turns out but I will say what I remembered first:

What strange Fruit is this - blood at the roots and blood at the tips?

The actual words are:

Southern trees bear strange fruit,

Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,

Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,

Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

It is by Billie Holiday and obviously about the racism that was (I use the past tense in hope there) preverlent in the American South at the time.

There is a video of her singing it here

The lyrics themselves were based on a poem written by a Jewish school teacher after a lynching.

My picture shows a tress with strange fruit i.e. drops of blood that fall to make a tide of blood which well up into hearts and that are chained by barbed wire - the hearts get smaller as you go up until they fall as drops of blood on the tree which is also wrapped in the same loop of barbed wire.

The tree is white - it is bones of society laid bare, when the fruit become to heavy they distort the frame work of the tree pulling the branches down to the sea of blood. Some of the branch tips are not imprisioned by the barbed wire and are untouched by the strange fruits - these are the areas where hope lays.

The 'ground' is the past dark and murky reaching to a future clouded but as yet untainted by the violence. The sea also becomes deeper and more turbulent as you move away from the tree - this is to represent how on tiny drop - some insignificant unthinking piece of cruelty can lead to war.

The picture shows how intolerance chains our hearts leading to a cyclic cascade of volience and pain. Crippling society.

I am pleased with this picture - it has only taken a decade or so to get to this junksure, I have painted many of these white trees and some have the strange fruit upon them but this is the symbolism I sought.

The colours are more vibrant than the photo shows and the barbed wire which is a continual length with out end twisted around both the hearts and society is done in enamel and so shines matalic which can never come across in a photo.