Review of August

I have taken most of the summer off from performing poetry to catch up on writing some! I am now struggling to wind myself back up but September is action packed so the full calendar should help me back to the zone.

Mr G. and I went away, I promised him a poetry free holiday, I ended up having to find a public library to send a contract and take a few calls on the beach, other than that – I took a break and actually found it refreshing.

August is also packed full of birthdays (including my own). The summer wasn’t fantastic weather-wise so as soon as there was a sunny day, the garden beckoned… and all of this kept me away from my desk!

 

Opportunities

Back in July I was approached by Roz Goddard through West Midlands Reader Network to apply for a Reader in Residence position which I was successful at obtaining – more on this soon, I have had the preliminary planning meeting and the project is due to start in November. This was my BIG news for the month.

Worcestershire Poet Laureate (WPL)

I had my second radio slot with Tammy Gooding at BBC Hereford & Worcester. This went really well again (no edits). I was able to promote upcoming events and talk about the success of LakeFest.

My first official Poet Laureate Blog Post went live, traditionally these have appeared quarterly, although we are working on a bi-monthly/monthly post as there are lots of events being created.

https://worcslitfest.co.uk/2017/08/18/ninas-wpl-blog-august-2017/

I wrote a Project Proposal for my Twin Cities Transatlantic Poetry, which is under review this month by committee. This will see American and British Poets collaborate.

Jinney Ring Sculpture Trail Poetry Workshop

The Sculpture Trail opened at the Jinney Ring and I went to explore the 90 sculptures in this year’s trail. I prepared and tested workshop content. All places have been booked now, I am excited and cannot believe after all this planning how close this event is!

A second date has been added in the evening 20th September 6-8 PM, so if you would like to book a place, email for details.

I organised a poetry event for Salt Festival on the 9th September. At short notice, I am delighted to have a handful of poets who can come and share their work. The bonus is that everyone has a 10 minute slot, which means they can share a good selection of their work.

After finding an alternative route for my European Twin Town Poetry Project, I had communication from the original source that I traced. A meeting has been set up and I think this might be a project that I now roll out twice with two towns in the County. It will be the first of its kind.

A spin off from this is I have been invited to read at a special dinner next month too.

August also saw the deadline for Contour – a digital magazine I plan to create three times during my tenure. This first issue invited poets from anywhere to write about Place /Worcestershire. I am currently (now September) working through the submissions and I have been fortunate enough to make contact with a photographer and have permission to use some of his County photography is this issue. More news on this soon.

Performances

The biggest performance opportunity this month was LakeFest. It was the first year they had the Poetry Tent and it was a great success!

Laureates at LakeFest

©2017 Ruth Inglis

 

Bridgnorth Arts Festival

Rick Sanders organised a festival poetry event at the Friars and had Claire Walker, Steve Harrison and Brenda Read-Brown headline, I couldn’t miss this. I had missed Poetry on the Terrace in Birmingham on Saturday as I discovered it too late and we had visitors at the weekend. It had been a week since I performed and I wanted to support Claire, who did a marvellous set.

It was a great evening, enjoyable and good to catch up with a lot of the Shropshire crowd.

Ben Parker Worcester Festival Poetry at Huntingdon Hall

Ben Parker has organised 3 poetry events this year in Worcester as part of his Residency. I had not been able to make the two events at the Swan Theatre as I was already booked. However, I have been counting down the months for this one. It was an epic list of performers some I knew and others I didn’t (which is always exciting).

Ben has a relaxed manner that I am very envious of when hosting events and the Worcester Festival was no exception. It was a great night of diverse poets performing and what I like about the ethos of these events is Ben wants the opportunity to gather a range of poets, beginners and those more seasoned. It creates a supportive atmosphere from the get go.

I hope he manages to squeeze another event like this in, I won’t be performing as you get the chance to perform once but I would certainly turn up to enjoy an evening of poetry like this one.

 

Voices from the Shadows

Back in 2014 Elaine Christie produced a wonderful anthology called Restless Bones. The proceeds of this book went to the Born Free Foundation.

https://awritersfountain.wordpress.com/2014/08/26/book-launch-restless-bones-poetry-anthology-for-born-free-foundation/

Now Elaine is working hard on the next book which will feature Artwork by Neth Brown. We had a Pre-book Launch to raise awareness of this current project and also to share some of the poetry which will appear in the book.

 ©2017 Elaine Christie

Link COMING SOON.

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Future Readings

I am headlining at PTS (13th September), the welcome return of this excellent night run by Rob Francis.

I am headlining SpeakEasy (14th September) as WPL.

I am in a Room 204 Showcase and get to do Birmingham Literature Festival for a 2nd time. Unfortunately the opportunity to perform in the Studio in the BLF was not possible as it clashes with Swindon Poetry Festival, where I am booked to perform.

The Literary Allsorts event is taking place twice. I am in the Pre-Festival event at Waterstones. It will be a great night!

Sarah Leavesley (Editor/Publisher) has organised a V. Press reading at Free Verse Poetry Book Fair London this September, myself and Stephen Daniels will be reading from our pamphlets in the afternoon. Last year I promised myself I would go to the Book Fair and now, one better… I get to read there and hopefully sell more books!

Poetry Wrap 2: April

April was busy, I plan to write the blog posts this Bank Holiday weekend and get the blog on track for May.

 A New Path of Poetry

Stanza

I started working on a very different style of poetry, sometimes this happens. What happened is I plotted the narrative, like a story and then free wrote the poem, next worked it back to bare bones. I was worried that such a brutal approach to editing would leave the reader searching around for meaning. Feedback was positive and resulted in me writing another small poem. Small poems (a little book of) is what I am working on right now, alongside other things of course.

Commissions

My attention was drawn to an Arts Council Commission. Beatfreeks were searching for 3 poets to participate in the Night at the Museum commission for the Pen Museum, Jewellery Quarter – Birmingham. I applied and kept fingers crossed as I felt I would love working with a museum filled with my favourite things. It stung a bit to not make it through. I want to be honest in the information on my blog, all creatives – in any field know, that for every success there was a lot of failure – people never see that part (usually).

Jess Davies & Sammy Jo are both part of the project and will enjoy it lots, I’m sure.

It looks exciting.

On the same day I applied for a festival commission (hoping to have more luck with that one).

Writing West Midlands – Network Meeting

We all met at the Custard Factory for another lively meeting, high points for me – apart from seeing everyone of course, included gathering more resources AND a free poetry book! WWM were having a clear out.

WILD WORDS – Restless Bones Fundraiser

Hosted by Tessa Kate Lowe
An evening of Poetry, Comedy & Music RESTLESS BONES readings, Comedy from Dave Rees-Jones & Music from Rachel Mayfield, Afro Mio & Joe Smith

The Restless Bones team performed poetry and listened to some invited guests storytell and play music too. It was a great night. I didn’t win the raffle, but we had a signature competition which Tessa Lowe and I won. Lots of prize goodies; Born Free T- shirt, DVD, book. We have now raised over £6oo to fight against the fur trade. It was lovely to see everyone again and share the night with a great audience.

The book costs £9.99 and all proceeds go to Born Free.

Elaine Catherine Christie

RESTLESS BONES £9.99 plus P&P £2.80

Check out Elaine’s website for more information.

Word Up – Bobby Parker, Jackie Smallridge & Sarah Dixon

It was a fantastic night at Word Up.

Bobby Parker’s poetry plays truth or dare, baring the soul of the small town blues: undaunted by subject matter and fearless of propriety or prettiness, he writes with dynamic clarity of frightening, lonely places within and without our selves. Publications include the critically acclaimed experimental books Ghost Town Music and Comberton, available @ The Knives Forks & Spoons Press. His debut full collection, Blue Movie, Parker holds back on nothing – both daringly up-front and utterly candid, Blue Movie veers between disaster, horror, comedy, sex, drugs, love and parenthood with dare-you-to-laugh brilliance. Along with their starkness and mucky-faced honesty, these poems are meticulously crafted, canny, an…d always one step ahead.

Sarah L Dixon, The Quiet Compere of Quiet, quiet, LOUD! in Chorlton, Manchester. She runs regular writing workshops. Sarah has been published in Stare’s Nest, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Loose Muse, BOMP 3, YorkMix, Rain Dog and many more.

“Sarah’s creative energy and enthusiasm are legendary. She encourages and gives a platform to fellow poets. Where would we be without her?-Carole Bromley

Jackie Smallridge’s infamous collection of poems SCRUBBERJACK published by Heaventree press is the kind a lot of ordinary people relate to as Jackie’s work is a real portrait of estate life. What she has to say in no uncertain terms is beyond the boundaries of political correctness & shoots straight from the observations of an honest mind. She doesn’t seek to make her audience feel safe, keeping her performances thrilling, raw & relentlessly entertaining.

Join us for a night of POETRY-MUSIC-SPOKEN WORD provided by the wonderfully talented inhabitants of Birmingham and beyond. We guarantee a night you’ll never forget.

Wenlock Poetry Festival

See the WENLOCK post here.

It was a fabulous day, shared with great poetry friends. I performed at the Open Mic ‘Poems & Pints’ and at the 52 event, I saw Jo Bell, Hollie McNish and Jonathan Edwards. I needed Sunday to recover (which was Cheltenham Poetry Festival) – I am hoping someone develops an energy supplement for poetry festival goers next year!  

 

Stratford Literary Festival – The Healing Power of Poetry

Power of Poetry to Heal < read a review of the event here.

It was great to meet Rachel Kelly in person and the sessions was moving and worthwhile.

42 Super Heroes

I always enjoy 42 and I missed it last month, it is like being reunited with a big family and this particular theme was a winner. Everyone performed fantastic Super Hero themed work, I had struggled for ages to write a super hero poem and ended up taking a prose poem (we have been working on these in the MOOC), then as I watched other performers I suddenly had a flashback to being 5 and wanting to be Wonder Woman. I wrote a poem minutes before I took my turn on stage, it wasn’t bad either. Positive reactions to the wit and wording.

Webinar on blogging

On Friday I found a link to a webinar on blogging – it was really aimed at people who generate an income through their blogs and those who blog a business. I decided to give it a go. I looked up the international time difference and was an hour late! Oppps. The end was good though and have had an email since saying I can link to a repeat for the next 24 hours.

I have been back to webinar  since and written 3 pages of notes which I can implement, some of which I have already started. More on this another soon.

MOOC course 3 weeks in

In 2013 when I first stepped back up to writing, I signed up to some online courses, none of which were a patch on this one. How Writer’s Write – I have discovered new poets and poems and styles through the weekly Master classes, I have created 6 new works, have been inspired by other things in the community to produce more. It is great to focus on the weekly assignments. The course was delayed and we are just about half way through now, it would have worked better in March as April and May are busy festival seasons, but it was worth the wait.

A Poetry Wrap

I am incredibly busy at the moment and don’t have the hours needed to blog spare, so for a while I am going to follow suit and do what other busy bloggers do – reduce my week into a wrap post. The absolutely amazing writing life happenings will still get a individual post though.

This week I have been working full-time as well as organising sets, writing new poetry and working on several projects. My MOOC course with the University of Iowa finally started! Postponed since March. It has been a worthwhile move so far and has created several pages of poetry. I continue to write poetry for NaPoWriMo – although I realise I have not blogged any extracts of these yet. Caldmore Garden Poets are working on a collaborative piece for the Carnival (and later in the summer, a festival). Unfortunately, I can’t make the Performance as I have my final WWM writers group on the 13th before the summer break. I am also sending David Calcutt workshop poetry to be published on his Natural Histories website.

This week two opportunities suddenly arose and I  submitted a commission proposal for a summer festival and made a bid/application for another event.

I am looking to Wenlock Poetry Festival this weekend. Before that I am reading at a Book event for Restless Bones Poetry Anthology in Birmingham tonight, attending a meeting with Writing West Midlands, hoping to catch ‘Men In General’ tomorrow night on their Worcester leg of the tour, back to Birmingham Friday night for Ddotti Bluebell and Jasmine Gardosi’s Word Up event where Sarah Dixon (Quiet Compere) is headlining alongside Bobby Parker and Jackie Smallbridge (Scrubber Jack). On Sunday I am tempted to get over to Cheltenham Poetry Festival to see Sarah James & Angela Topping and also Math Jones. I am not sure I will have enough energy for that though – especially as I have full time work at the beginning of next week in an incredibly challenging environment.

Motherʼs Milk – Teika Bellamy, Sarah James, Angela Topping
11am-12 midday, Playhouse Theatre Lounge, £6/4
Two prize-winning poets – Sarah James and Angela Topping- have joined forces in the first of a new
series of poetry duets being published by Mother’s Milk Books. Sarah and Angela will be joined by
Dr Teika Bellamyof Mother’s Milk for a Q&A session, where the focus of the discussion will be how,
as mothers, we can best meet the demands of family life whilst still pursuing our own creative projects.

Math Jones – The Other Side of Sleep Reading at Cheltenham Poetry Festival

Saturday at 2:30pm Arachne Press Event

Oxfam Bookshop 31 Cambray Place GL50 1JP

I would highly recommend this events if you can get to the Cheltenham Poetry Festival. There is a wealth of great events in the festival programme this year. It is just a shame it clashes with Wenlock Poetry Festival too.

Next week I am going to the  to see Rachel Kelly, Susanna Howard and Jill Fraser. I am going with mum, who switched me onto Rachel Kelly’s book to begin with.

Wednesday I am performing at an Open Mic, Thursday sees some writing deadlines. I will also be completed Napowrimo, writing assignments for my MOOC and preparing my  next Headline set and planning for the next WWM group which I have the delight of leading for the 2nd time this year.

AND BREATHE …

Writing, Headlining Restless Bones, 16 Days of Activism and a Proof

This week I have mainly focused on my writing again, missing some open mic events and other performances. Mr G and I have also started sorting the house *for Christmas, we still have a lot of things boxed up from the move and have rooms that are practically inaccessible because of this.

This week also saw ‘Black Friday’ SALES coming to the UK – and although I didn’t really take part, I did happen to be in town buying a few birthday gifts. I spent an hour in a clothes shop trying on various items and finally picked 2 things, calculated my 30% discount, got a bit excited by the bargain of a winter micro-fleece and a pair of jeans, got to the till – none of the items I bought were in the BF SALE! Typical!

I am working on current submissions with several deadlines early December as well as compiling a 15 minute set for next weekend’s gig.

© 2014 KGC

On Tuesday 25th a group of featured poets from the Restless Bones Poetry Anthology Headlined at Jacqui Rowe’s event. I had a fantastic night and met several poets who then came and performed for Sound Bites this weekend. The anthology continues to sell well and will now be on Sale by Silhouette Press at the next Inzine event in Coventry. Performers included; Elaine Christie (creator of the collection), Tessa Lowe, Claire Walker, David Barber, myself- Nina Lewis, Jude Ashworth,

Poetry Bites: Restless Bones

“One of the top 10 venues for poetry in the UK” (Susan Richardson, Radio 4).

Tonight’s Poetry Bites will be devoted to contributors to ‘Restless Bones’, an anthology raising funds for the Born Free Foundation.

BUY YOUR COPY HERE;

InZine Fest II

SATURDAY
12-5pm
6/12/2014
@ The Pod
1A Lamb Street, Coventry, CV1 4AE

Jacqui was at an awards evening, Poetry Bites was hosted by Chris Fewings and a grand job he did too!

RELATED LINKS:

http://silhouettepress.co.uk/events/inzine-fest

https://awritersfountain.wordpress.com/2014/08/26/book-launch-restless-bones-poetry-anthology-for-born-free-foundation/

My next event was yesterday at The Library of Birmingham, ‘Sound Bites’ as part of the 16 Days of Activism. The subject matter of this event was not pretty or entertaining but I was proud to be part of this event, organised for 16 poets by Najma Hush.

There were only about 10 performers who made it to the Bookbox yesterday, the quality of writing and performing was incredible. Moving first hand experiences and poetry to fit the Activism themes. I wrote 3 poems especially for the event – one of my poems focused on Slavery – last night they featured this issue on the evening news. Slavery was abolished in this Country in 1833 – but unbelievably it is still a huge (largely unseen) problem.

The rest of the women present were absolutely amazing, individuals who shared a piece of themselves, their experiences and private thoughts about life as a female upon earth. Thanks to Marcia Calame, Ddotti Bluebell, Jackie Smallridge, Leah Atherton, Nina Lewis, Sammy Joe, Abie Budgen, Carole Griffiths and Susan Philips – Nikki Bi and Shahida Choudhry who all helped to create Saturday Soundbites : Women Unplugged, spent at 16 Days of Activism Birmingham, UK .

– Najma Hush

http://www.libraryofbirmingham.com/womenspeakout

http://www.libraryofbirmingham.com/event/Events/16days-womenunplugged

Showcasing an eclectic mix of women performers from across the West Midlands. This event will be a unique gathering of our region’s most talented women, coming together to artistically express their passionate views for Human Rights, live through performance.

 

Whether you want to spin us a yarn, spit your bars, hit us with your punch line, or wax us lyrical with your prowess, join us at The Library of Birmingham.

 

Hosted by Najma Hush, poets reading include: Marcia Calame, Abie Budgen, Ddotti Bluebell, Jackie Smallridge, Nina Lewis, Leah Atherton & Sammy Joe. And the two poets who came from my plug at Poetry Bites, who due to dropping acts were able to perform Carole Griffiths and Susan Philips.

It was also good to see 4 men who had come to support the women in their lives at the event too.

  Photos to follow.

Women Unplugged is just one of the event for Amnesty International’s, The Official 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence Campaign (29 Nov – 7 Dec 2014). With a fantastical array of creative events filled with vivacious activities, interactive shows and live performances for the people of Birmingham at the People’s Palace (organised by the Women’s Networking Hub).

It has been a brilliant week and the Caldmore writing Workshop, led by David Calcutt  which was due to happen this Tuesday has been rescheduled for early December, which means I can enjoy it without having to save energy for an evening performance too.

I have received my proof from Paragram, for the upcoming anthology ‘Remember’ AND in addition to all this excitement Christmas has arrived! The local towns have all had SWITCH on and the pretty lights are twinkling, the markets have arrived Victorian Christmas Market in Worcester and Frankfurt Market in Birmingham, although I wouldn’t recommend Saturday day time crush as experienced yesterday! I saw Christmas trees being delivered at school when I left on Thursday and we have our Advent Calendars ready to fill and I am getting excited about our 2nd Christmas together in our house. Before that we have 3 family birthdays to celebrate too! (And lots of Christmas Shopping!)