Tag: illustration

Freelance Reflections #3

News

Another couple of weeks of freelance life, and I’ve now got three students I’m tutoring, and although other paid work has not been much over these last two weeks, I’ve been busy with lots of unpaid activities, such as planning workshops and tutoring sessions (which takes a long time at this stage) and writing a funding application. I’ll still be working on both of these things next week too.

I’m also using a maths revision book to brush up on my Maths, and have found there are a couple of different ways to do subtraction, and the new way I’ve found is actually the one recommended by the government.

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Joel Auterson at his book launch for ‘Unremember’

I went to Joel’s book launch, which was really lovely, and there I saw lots of old familiar faces, as well as a few new ones. The next evening I went to see The Head Wrap Diaries, and I ended up reviewing it for The Norwich Radical.

I’ve dedicated some time to writing, particularly on Sundays, but have been using my long journeys to take part in NaPoWriMo still, which ends on Monday. I’ve been sharing some extracts from my new poems via Instagram. I’ve also done a little bit of illustration as an experiment to get me back into visual art a bit.

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(L-R) ‘unnatural council hands in cold looked blue’ by Sara Barker and ‘Sleeping Beauty will hum about mine ears’ by Fiona Rae

Yesterday I decided to go to a few exhibitions around Old Street, including a visit to BEERS, Victoria Miro, and Parasol Unit. I went for an incredible tapas meal at Boqueria and then to a reggaeton and salsa night, where I danced until the early hours. I’m now feeling pretty smug because I’ve had so little sleep, but I’ve been super productive doing some content writing work, plus poetry and Spanish practice and this!

I also recently got an office chair for my bedroom and I love it! I was on a horrible wooden fold-up one all this time before. I can even put it on a massage function!

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‘Sea Painting, Dunwich’ by Jessica Warboys

Book Review: Talk you round till dusk by Rebecca Tantony

Reviews

I received a copy of Rebecca Tantony’s Talk you round till dusk by illustrator Anna Higgie, who I met last year when I performed at BoomTown. You can have a peak inside the book to see the beautiful illustrations here. You can also buy some of her work from the book at her Etsy shop.

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I fell in love with this book after reading the first piece and it’s become one of my favourite books from Burning Eye Books.  The pieces flow between flash fiction, poetry and short stories, each piece with strikingly vivid imagery and captivating stories. Slipping between third and first person, placing a ‘you’ between lines of poetry, leaving you wondering where the stories lie between autobiographical and fiction. This use of the lyrical ‘I’ is something I always find fascinating, and enjoy the element of play this offers.

Much of the work deals with relationships and searching, love and travel. At times it’s heart-breaking: ‘he only liked women who felt safe without colour and peroxide to hide behind.’ At other times it’s liberating:

‘What did you do that for?’

‘I did it for me,’ she said, before the wind set her hair free, spilling it across the sky.

From the statement ‘women don’t normally drink pints,’ I could immediately relate. When the next page spoke of Andalucia, I recalled fond memories of Nerja. Tantony managed to capture the feeling of the place, and its pages fuelled my excitement to carry out the same path and live in Spain: ‘Instead of breaking up we had moved to Spain’ hit me with its poignancy, and yet its humour. With orange blossoms showing the direction for discovery at the end, there is a perfect balance of reality and romance.

Different pieces are intercepted with short poetic descriptions and musings, like notes in a travel journal, such as ‘I found your at sunrise and fell in love with a combination of body parts’. The collection takes the reader across the world, from Spain to India, Cyprus, San Francisco, through a Californian road-trip, to Paris, to Mexico, and ending back in Bristol. Through the turbulence of many characters, of wanderings and wondering whether ‘we might not make it back together in one piece’, at the end of one year and the start of a next, bubbling with excitement with the journeys we might go on, it seems apt to end on the sentiment of We are Braver This Way. In it we find the title quotation: ‘I’ll talk you round till dusk and when the final countdown/comes we’ll be dancing, won’t we?’ Whether we get the happy ending we long for is up to you.

Talk you round till dusk is available from Burning Eye Books (2015) for £9.99.

Christmas is Coming…

Music, News

Winter has been rather chilly (no surprises there Radiohead) but the sun was glorious the week before.  Here are some photos I took whilst waiting at Worcester Park train station.  The skirt is from Primark.  I bought it and then realised it’s verging on the ‘midi’ which I didn’t think I’d like but it’s nice and floaty and whooshes around when you spin.

So, me and Matt have been posting these little cards around – you can grab one from two of my local libraries (Worcester Park and Sutton) as well as the Poetry Library at the Southbank Centre.

I’ve taken a few comparison shots of Christmas trees as I’m pretty proud of our tree this year 🙂  Mine is the one at the end, and you can see it all lit up on the left of this text.

A slight digression here, but I had my iPod on shuffle and found these two tracks went really well together: Enter Shikari’s Mothership, followed by Bloc Party’s Talons.  I’ve got them to listen to via YouTube just below…

Speaking of music… after buying tickets to see Rihanna in May for my birthday, the day finally came!  I went with my friend from uni, Josie, and some of her friends.  Calvin Harris began the night, get everyone going (well, some people going… as we worked our way through the crowd there were a few people standing very still and leaving piles of bags and coats for us to trip over).  The lady herself was, as expected, amazing!  Highlights include Rihanna playing the drums, pole-dancing as an art-form (along with her own rather saucy dancing) and the finale of Umbrella, ending a night of fantastic tunes.  It was also quite cool seeing all the different costume changes as well as witnessing someone who can keep breathing with all that singing and dancing.

In other news, I have had my haircut so that it’s no longer asymmetric.  I hadn’t had a cut for 7 months so I splashed out at Toni & Guy (Mustafa is expensive but he’s my favourite) and I know you’re “supposed” to go every 4-6 weeks or something but I’m going to leave it until May now.  I’m growing it out and I can’t wait!  I have a full fringe as well which I haven’t had since I was at Primary school or something!  I spent a few days in Norwich and Matt got me some lovely presents (he made me open some but I’ve saved a few) and below you can see the amazing picture he’s drawn off us 🙂

I came home to London to find my self-published book!  It had typos which I have hopefully sorted now but I’d really welcome some feedback.  When I get published by a publishing company (remaining positive and not saying ‘if’) I want it to be very visually exciting but I’ve just done the basic bones so that if people want to rip it apart for the poetry they can.  That said, if someone completely hated it, they probably wouldn’t like anything I did but I am welcoming any constructive criticism.

I’ve also got an eBook and priced them both quite cheaply.  The hard copy comes with extra poems and costs £2 more than the eBook.  Both are available here from Lulu by clicking here.  In about 6-8 weeks they’ll be available from other places like Amazon too.  Great if you end up with a new Kindle or Ipad in your stocking this year.  It’s Christmas in half an hour – so have a great time celebrating!

xxx