Tag: digital spoken word festival

Freelance Reflections #29

News

It’s the final few days of the Living Record Festival, and I’ve received my first review of the festival! The Reviews Hub writer Maryam Philpott reviewed my piece ‘Circles’. I found out via Twitter, seeing my photo (taken by Tyrone Lewis) and the four lovely little stars. I told my family straight away, and my dad, who’s a history teacher, immediately knew she was also a historian and author of ‘Air, Sea and Power in World War I’. How exciting! I’ve also managed to get a press pass to write some reviews of other shows for The Norwich Radical, so I can listen to as many as I can squeeze in until the end of the festival.

Aside from this, and doing a bit of a takeover tomorrow for The Bedford Place’s Instagram on Saturday, this week has been less hectic than others, though I’m still trying to get on top of things so that perhaps by March I may be able to test out a new schedule that will seek to bring more creativity into my life. Although I’d love to create a binaural version of ‘Circles’, moving forward, I’m looking towards other ongoing projects, including prose, poetry and a spoken word show.

For some reason, these have been printed with a black background, but here are a couple more activities I’ve been sent. You have until Monday 22nd February to ‘Circles’ and send me your designs via @carminamasoliver on Instagram or head to my contact page for other ways to get in touch. You just need to print out the design and colour with pens, pencils, felt tips – whatever you have at hand!

Freelance Reflections #23

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Since my grandad passed away just over a week ago now, I’ve found how difficult it is to experience such close familial loss and try to work at the same time. This week has been a struggle, but when you’re self-employed, there is so much uncertainty about your finances and I didn’t find out about the funeral date until the end of the week, and which days of work would be impacted. It’s hard to even allow for time off, even when it’s so needed. Then again, my cousin has also been in the same position, unable to take time off from her job, despite 3-5 days being the standard, from what I know. It has meant welling up with tears whilst walking to work for 45 minutes, finding more time to talk to family without being able to see them, and writing poems of grief in the early hours of the morning.

I feel like I’m just about staying afloat, whilst wanting to carve time that allows me to realign my schedule the way that is more fulfilling each day. I’m also ordering 25 copies of my book ‘Circles’ from my publisher, Burning Eye Books, ahead of the digital ‘Living Record Festival’, which will be taking place from 17th January until 22nd February, where listeners can buy a copy of my physical book, along with the audio and creative activity. You can now buy £15 tickets for the festival, remembering that this includes a copy of the book, which is worth £10.

I am also waiting to hear the results tomorrow having been shortlisted for the Anthology Magazine prize, so fingers crossed! It would be something positive to hold onto for my poetry career, for sure, but even making the shortlist is still an achievement worth celebrating, something that I forget to do all too often.