Tag: sabotage

Spring Time Delights

News

The sun has got his (her?) hat on and I’m coming out to play! I had the past couple of weeks off work, and as much as I like my job… it’s pretty cool not to be working. I went to the Schwitters exhibition at Tate Britain – I’m going to review this for a submission, so more on that later. I graduated from my MA in Creative Entrepreneurship (with Distinction) and my poetry collection was even mentioned before making my way across the podium. I had a lovely meal at Tramshed afterwards and then went on to a meeting for She Grrrowls, my new Feminist group that I’m running with Emily Prichard. We’re going to be doing arts events alongside it. This is probably a good time to mention that we’re looking for female spoken word artists to perform in Kingston on 22nd July. Head to the contact page to express your interest! You need to be 26 or under as it is part of IYAF.

photo (7)I have lots of exciting news (some of which I still can’t share at the moment). Firstly, I have been invited to hold a stall at the Saboteur Awards on 29th May. I shall be bringing lots of lovely books (I have over 30 copies – eeek!) as well as t-shirts, badges, stickers and audio CDs. I’m excited about attending the awards as I will get to see if Shake the Dust wins an award, woop woop!

Also, in case you haven’t heard, it’s NaPoWriMo aka National Poetry Writing Month. You’re meant to write 30 poems, so one poem per day. I’ve had a couple of catch-up days but I’d say I’d doing pretty well. I’ll probably post the best ones when I’m done. Anyway, I’m doing much better than when I tried to do a novel… though I have started reading a book about novel writing – one day! *shakes fist*

I’ve also been asked to be the resident poet for Bang Said the Gun, in May. I’m really excited as I’ve been wanted to go there more and this means that I will have to be there every night and I get to perform. I have a plus one each night, so I’m hoping some of my poetic, and perhaps non-poetic friends will come with me.

I’ve also got a plus one for tomorrow’s scratch performance of (part of) my piece ‘Circles’ that I created from the ‘Word’s a Stage’ project by Apples & Snakes, where I was mentored by Malika Booker. It takes place at Hackney’s Picturehouse Cinema, and is called ‘Scratch That Hackney!’

 

I tried to be poetic…

News, Poetry Gigs

Don’t forget to keep checking out BadRobot Poetry.  Also, submit to my project. Put it on your to-do list. Start a to-do list in Excel. Put it on a post-it note. Put in on a mini-white-board. A chalk-board. Write it in your diary. Better yet, do it now. SUBMIT! SUBMIT TO ME!!!

Check out my review by Koel Mukherjee for Sabotage for my event, Carmina’s Poetry Tease (read it? See – I am good! Submit! Be a part of the next event!)

On Saturday I am going to my first workshop for Word’s A Stage, a project run by Apples & Snakes (who I seem to have to thank for a majority of my poetic success thus far). November 21st – keep the date in your diary. I will also be looking for people to eat dinner/Nando’s with. Or not. Because I will be incredibly nervous.

Now, on a more serious note, I just got informed via email of Amanda Todd’s suicide, as a result of cyber bullying. I cried at what she had to go through, and the knowledge of how common this reality is for teenagers in the age of technology. Not only does it highlight the issue of cyber bullying, but also that of slut-shaming, which is a massive problem that exists in society as a whole.

I know that, at school, I was turned against by certain individuals for being lonely and confiding in a friend, for publicly writing in an online-diary when my family life was hard and I felt I didn’t know who to talk to, for wanting to be normal around boys after five years of isolation from them and not knowing how. Wanting to be liked as a person but being seen for purely the physical.

When you’re a teenager, you get called a slut by boys and others girls because you gave a guy a blow-job once (and I’m talking over the age of consent here, 16+). When you’re an adult, you know that most women do give blow-jobs.  And you also know that any decent man will return the favour.

Part of this problem is that young people need more education on the emotional side of sex.  And speaking of emotions, we need to stop pretending that men don’t have any – this just leads to repression and a false idea of masculinity. And we need to stop acting like girls who express their emotions are crazy, that there’s something wrong with them.

Another issue is that in the adult world slut-shaming is still rife. And that’s why, mainstream songs, like Christina Aguilera’s Can’t Hold us Down, are important. There are double standards and they need addressing. This is confirmed by those commenting on Amanda Todd’s case, saying she ‘deserved it’. No. Nobody deserves to feel like life is not worth living.