Tag: sunshine

Freelance Reflections #48

News

I didn’t write last week as I was hoping to share some photos of the Poetry Party, but still yet to see them. For now, here’s some pictures of the lovely park. I performed my poem, ‘The Missing Scissors’, twice. The first time, I bombed it and forgot the lines three quarters of the way through. The second time, I smashed it, and could go home with my head held high. It was really fun to take part in the workshops with Simon Mole and Gecko, sharing some fresh materials with the audience/participants.

I really want to do more visual art, and I’m hoping to do an Art Therapy MA (most likely September 2022 by the looks of things), and I have seen that there may be a way for me to get a loan to cover part of the course after all (as I can’t get a government loan, despite self-funding my first MA). So far, I’ve just been working with a student to produce our own Top Trumps cards, which I’ve really enjoyed. And I won the game we played with them!

In other news, I have bulk bought some Montezuma’s chocolate. I will challenge myself to make it last until the end of the year, but we shall see. I also couldn’t resist the Penned in the Margins sale, and bought four books I’ve been really looking forward to getting. Also, watch this space as on Monday I will be one of sixty chosen poets to feature on a Poetry Map of London, as part of the Royal Society of Literature’s ‘Write Across London’ project.

  • Luke Wright: The Feel-Good Movie of the Year, Inua Ellams: The Actual (Fuck), Abi Palmer: Sanatorium & Melissa Lee-Houghton: Sunshine

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!’