Review of October

Review of October

Week 1

Following advice I was trying to not be too busy pre-book launch but after a week off events I took my writing group for Writing West Midlands, watched all the poetry coverage on BBC2, missed another writing deadline and decided that I would drive to Cheltenham to Buzzwords and catch David Clarke and Cliff Yates (another new-to-me poet).

Buzzwords was great, I realised I hadn’t been for over a year. I had a fabulous evening and do not regret it, despite it being the night before my launch. I read my latest poem – a work on tribal philosophy and have some poetry drafts from the workshop to work on when I get a chance (Christmas holidays maybe).

I had imagined I would spend Monday getting ready for the evening – but in reality I missed writing deadlines, overslept, did everything I could to reduce the nervous anxiety of what if no-one turns up and finally at about 2pm started to get organised.

I am going to write a full post about the launch and some follow up posts about the organisation aspects, as there is a gap of relevant information in this area.

Waterstones Book Launch for Fragile Houses in Birmingham with Guest Readers – Roy McFarlane, Antony Owen and Claire Walker. It was a cracking night, the next morning I woke up to go to work and it felt like a dream.

The following evening I headlined at Stirchley Speaks. I have been headlining since Autumn 2014 but this is the first time I had a book to sell. I did leave home without them and had to turn back to grab the bag, I knew there was something I had forgotten. Since this night I have started using a large event handbag and always carry a couple of copies.

Stirchley Speaks was a great night and I sold lots of books, I realised at this point I had underestimated how many I should order. Taking advice from Jane Commane back in 2014 who said that audience doesn’t necessarily convert to readership. I was aware not everyone I know will buy the book. I have a list of people who want a copy next time I see them too.

It was good to catch up with everybody in the P Café and it was an incredible night of poetry.

The next day I contacted my publishers and ordered another box.

I hadn’t submitted any poetry for a while and had news of one of my poems being published in the USA. More on that when it happens.

I treated myself to an evening off and a little rest before National Poetry Day, which is fast becoming one of my favourite dates on the calendar.

I collected my new batch of books and went to Suz Winspear’s NPD event in Worcester. As Worcestershire Poet Laureate, Suz is working hard this year in the city and found a brand new venue for the NPD Event. Berkeley Almshouses was the venue and some of the residents came to enjoy the event. It was a great evening and the old chapel had fabulous acoustics and suited Suz very well.

This year’s theme was messages and I certainly sent a few texts whilst trying to track down the entrance to the venue. Great sets from everyone and I got to catch up with Math Jones (up from London) and Ruth Stacey. I even sold a book!

I spent the weekend Fri- Sun at Swindon Poetry Festival, it was 2nd year there and much as I loved it last year, this year was EVEN better! It deserves a full post and as I pretty much did everything on the programme, will certainly need one. A great way to finish an exhausting, fantastic week in my poetryskin!

Other great news was Matt Windle became Birmingham’s new Poet Laureate and by the end of the week I had sold over 50 copies of my book!

 

Week 2

Started with a recovery day. I started to create Poetry Films, something I have got hooked on. Last year Sarah Leavesley kindly tutored a group of us in the art of production and I was inspired by the Poetry Films I had seen at Swindon. There are several poems in my pamphlet that I will rarely perform. These are all now Poetry Films.

On my recovery day I spent some INKSPILL admin time and rehearsed a set for Licensed to Rhyme. Roy McFarlane was headlining. It was a great night and I was allowed to sell my pamphlets, they had a table and everything.

The next evening I went to Ledbury to the Poetry Salon where Deborah Alma was reading and finally got a copy of her book, ‘True Tales of the Countryside’, a beautiful Emma Press pamphlet.

I unexpectedly performed in the open mic section. Fragile Houses reached Ledbury. It has since reached Palestine, Malta, Holland and Australia to my knowledge. It was a wonderful, rich evening and great to see Ledbury folk again.

This week was also Birmingham Literature Festival and due to work commitments and events was the first time since coming back to writing (2013) that I missed it. The night after Ledbury Liz Berry and Benjamin Zephaniah were performing and also Gregory Leadbetter had his book launch for ‘Fetch’ (Nine Arches) at Waterstones, Birmingham with Angela France and Jo Bell reading.

© 2016 Nine Arches

I was gutted to miss both these events but with working and poeting I had no energy and if I remember rightly was asleep as soon as I had finished tea.

The following night Luke Kennard was performing in Birmingham and I missed it because it clashed with SpeakEasy, where I was already performing. Roy McFarlane was the feature and it was a joy to listen to him twice in one week.

Fragile Houses received a Chez Nous Review which I was delighted to discover came from Gram Joel Davies. He actually chose some of my favourite foods – go and have a read.

http://vpresspoetry.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/chez-nous-recommendations-for-fragile.html

By the end of the week I was run down with illness and missed Holding Baby a play by Jan Watts and the rest of the Book to the Future Festival (again for the first time since 2013). I hope to catch the show another time, I have heard nothing but good things about it.

It was great to finish the week with a Madhatter Review http://www.madhatterreviews.co.uk/books–e-books.html

 

Week 3

Fragile Houses has positive reviews on Amazon and Good Reads.

I was asked to do something that I am really excited about, more on that next year. I spent days preparing for INKSPILL in shifts of 8 – 12 hours.

Mr G and I went to London to see Woven Hand.

I was too tired to manage Hit the Ode and Smokestack Poetry Evening event clash), both in Birmingham, both top nights. I also missed the Dylan Thomas Festival, running for the first year in Cheltenham. Unfortunately it clashed with INKSPILL this year.

I signed up to an online course ‘Arts for Health’ and performed poetry for ‘She Speaks Her Mind’ Woo Feministas – alongside Suz Winspear, Charley Barnes, Claire Badsey & Holly Magill.

Then of course it was INKSPILL with Gaia Harper, Roy McFarlane and Deanne Gist. This was the 4th year for us and it was a success. I already have Guests and plans lined up for 2017.

The Magnetic Diaries – which I saw in it’s infancy in Hereford last year was on at the MAC and although I couldn’t make the show I did make Sarah Leavesley’s workshop ‘Pain to Poetry’. I have some poetry notes and one poem so far from this and it was a challenging (emotionally) but not unpleasant experience. I also got time to reconnect with many poetry friends I have not seen in a while.

 

Week 4

I spent the early part of the week writing. I entered a few free poetry competitions. I took some bookings for next year and exchanged pamphlets with J.V Birch through the post. She is a childhood friend, now living in Australia and has also become a poet at the same time as me. It has been exciting to map and mirror each other’s journeys through this new world.

I dressed up for Halloween as a ‘Cereal Killer’ and went off to perform at the Halloween Special 42 in Worcester. Where (due to the wig) people didn’t recognise me. It was a fabulous night and a great excuse to dress up. Fantastic sets from everyone.

           

photos by Liam Cortintias

The next day I had to do my best to get all the make up off and go to a workshop run by Angela France, the theme was Fairy Tales and I had a thoroughly enjoyable day and even sold a few books.

I listened to poetry on Radio 4 and missed my Stanza meeting to take part in a Charity Quiz night. All teams of 8 and due to circumstances we ended up with just 4 in our team. We were going for the Booby Prize but decided it was hard to share a bottle of wine and so started to get answers right. We came in 5th not too shoddy, somewhere in the middle. Over £1000 was raised for MacMillan.

I hoped to go to Lania Knight’s workshop, having missed her last one due to a crash on the motorway, but this weekend we celebrated a special family birthday.

 

Watching a Radio Show – Birmingham Literature Festival & BBC Radio 4

BLF Radio 4 Roger McGough, Jo Bell, Ian Duhig and Rachel New 

Photos were taken on my mobile to capture atmosphere and although they are not the sharpest focus they are still covered by copyright.

After the launch (Thursday 3rd October) my next booked event was on Sunday 6th for the Radio 4 recording of Poetry Please (a show that has been running for 30 years) presented by Roger McGough.

I was very excited! I had hoped to post about this sooner (offline issues) as the live recording was broadcast last Sunday (a week later) on the 13th October. With the wonders of the internet you may still be able to access it and give it a listen.

It was a great experience, just being part of a live audience. But the afternoon held far more treasures than just that.

Roger McGough, who I have met before, walked past me whilst I was queuing to get in for a start! He was the host of the show and they had a team of actors  reading many of the chosen poems. They also had Jo Bell (Canal Laurete and featured poet on my National Poetry Day post on this blog) Lifted and the first poem she performed was ‘Lifted’ it was great to hear it live. And I discovered the joys and influences of Ian Duhig’s poetry.

After the first recording I got brave and spoke to Roger and took a few photos of him. Bless him for his time and acceptance of flashing smart phones.

One of the great things was although the majority of the audience were Radio 4 listeners, there were plenty of young people too. I heard a couple of ladies refer to us as Roger’s groupies, I have to correct, we were not. He is such a kind poet, willing to pose for photos and chat to us.

I then got braver and went to speak to Jo Bell. I forget how friendly poet’s are and still expect a bit of a brush off from them…. Fortunately so far everyone has been lovely and genuinely seemed interested in conversing. I hadn’t realised that Jo Bell was the director of National Poetry Day until we started talking. The Director of the Poetry Society was also there and she mentioned the familiarity of awritersfountain blog as she was keeping track of National Poetry Day posts and had seen that I posted Lifted – Jo’s poem on NPD. It is a great honour that someone in her position has fleetingly visited…. On a par with a Royal visit from the Queen (although I doubt she reads many wordsmith blogs…)

I realised Jo was also performing and hosting a workshop and I felt guilty I hadn’t tickets for either… I have kept excel sheet accounts of my expenditure this year and so far the world of writing has cost a monthly salary! I am running low on funds unless I enter and win some monetary competitions soon. Her performance was on a day I was already attending the festival, I thought I might try to go, as it turned out I had to work.

It was great meeting Jo after choosing her as my National Poetry Day Blog Poet (an accolade I am sure she will treasure as much as her Canal Laureate and Directorial role!)

 After a brief chat and another photo (wish I had washed my hair and thought more about wearing make up!) – I snapped a few other website publicity shots – here’s one of Jo and Ian together.

Then went out for the interval between recordings…. and found Mr Roger McGough behind a table handing out autographs! Well signing books mainly.

They (BBC Radio 4) have a new book – which they were unable to advertise (BBC) which celebrates 30 years of Poetry Please, it is a doorstop size volume that would do battle with any winter draft. Roger was signing them. I bought the last but one copy hurriedly and hoped that he wouldn’t have left the signing table. Which he hadn’t but Rachel New (the resident writer for BLF attempting a 10 day sentence – writing 30,000 words over the festival) appeared at the same time to meet Roger herself.

I also wanted to speak with her -I’d failed to find her in the library on the Knowledge floor because in my mind she was in the big circular garden room you can see a few metres away from the entrance.

Roger was busy signing books so I struck up conversation with Rachel first, then he was ready to sign mine and I was still talking to Rachel – I felt really rude about this as I handed him the book and said ‘please sign this’, I also missed out on a personal message as he couldn’t get a word in edgeways to ask me my name as I manically gushed over Rachel’s challenge!

I hope he didn’t think I was going to flog the signed book on Ebay or something. It is on my shelf along with the other publications bought at the Literature Festival. I stood there awkwardly for a few seconds trying to make up for my rudeness, but by then Rachel and Roger were in full flow (talking) and it would have been rude to butt in and only fuel the fire that I was an obnoxious member of the public who at first ignores the great names and then attempts to talk over the top of them! So I withdrew and took this photo –

 which was snapped by crew members for the official BLF website. (I spoke to Lee, the festival photographer on the last day of the festival in the hope that I may be able to use some of the brilliant BLF website pictures, unfortunately Lee was unsure and they have been locked so that we can’t use them, fair enough I suppose.)

The 2^nd recording was With Great Pleasure and The Echo Chamber, with Paul Farley (due for broadcast January 2014.)

The second half was just as fantastic as the Poetry Please recording and the production included some people choice poetry as well. I wasn’t brave enough to introduce a poem – but I did have my chance and could have been on the radio show (Poetry Please) too! I thought I had stepped into the poetry limelight enough today and instead shrank into my seat!

And not mentioned in the programme was the greatest surprise of all. Katie Sultana – an exceptionally talented and confident teen, she won a National schools competition for reciting poetry -she was so talented. I wanted to hire her there and then to perform my poetry for me.

Watch out for her name.

In stars!

Tune In

BBC Radio 4
today at 4.30pm
Poetry Please
The radio programme I watched being made in the studio theatre at the Literature Festival last weekend. Featuring Liz Berry, Jo Bell, Ian Duhig and others & of course compared by the lovely, funny Roger McGough!

Tune in, listen & enjoy!

Radio Four Poetry Please

I am excited about returning to the City Literature Festival this afternoon for another dose of Poetry. I am watching some Radio 4 programmes being recorded.  There are two editions of Poetry Please, a special edition of With Great Pleasure with Paul Farley, and a recording of The Echo Chamber.

We are delighted to welcome three wonderful BBC Radio literature programmes to the Birmingham Literature Festival. Join us for recordings of two editions of Poetry Please, a special edition of With Great Pleasure with Paul Farley, and a recording of The Echo Chamber.

Presented by Roger McGough

Roger McGough introduces poems inspired by the canals and waterways. Including readings of poems commissioned from poet Jo Bell, the UK’s first Canal Laureate, and from poets Liz Berry and Paul Farley.

In our second edition of Poetry Please, Roger McGough introduces a rattlebag of poems requested by listeners of Poetry Please.

These editions of Poetry Please will be recorded for broadcast in October on Radio 4.

With Great Pleasure & The Echo Chamber

With Paul Farley

 Poet Paul Farley talks movingly about the poetry and prose that has accompanied him through his life. This edition of With Great Pleasure will be recorded for broadcast in January 2014.Following With Great Pleasure, poet Paul Farley will be recording features for a future edition of BBC Radio Four’s contemporary poetry programme, The Echo Chamber.