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Launched!
The Loose Muse Anthology has launched….
… at the Whitechapel Gallery
Not so long ago I was jumping about because I had received my very first writing commission and now the book is here!
It is the first anthology published by Loose Muse, a brilliant London based organisation to support women writers. Loose Muse holds the only regular women’s reading event in the capital on the second Wednesday of every month in the Poetry Cafe in Covent Garden.
The Whitechapel Gallery had been chosen for the launch and was an inspiring place for the event. The room had the clean white lines of a display area and was the perfect backdrop for the colourful gathering of writers, their families and friends who celebrated the birth of Loose Muse, the book. We were a truly eclectic bunch and were in turn moved from surprise to mirth, amazement to sorrow, with a great helping of wry observations thrown in for good measure, during an evening of readings by more than 30 different writers.
I was especially in awe of those who recited their work – where I struggle merely to read coherently, they spread their wings and launched themselves into full blown performances of the highest quality. I was transfixed by the energy in that room.
Agnes Meadows, international poet and all round amazing character, is the energy behind the L M experience, and she did everyone proud with the compilation of this first (of many!) anthologies. The book is exquisite in every detail with a stunning cover – artwork by Lorraine Clark – and is full of impressively diverse writing.
To find out more about the book, and about Loose Muse, visit the web site at http://loose-muse.com/ and follow them on Twitter (AgnesMeadows1).
Posted in Loose Muse, open mic, performance poetry, performing your writing, poet, poetry, poetry commission, poetry slam, Poetry Society, poets, Short stories, short story, social etworking, twitter, Uncategorized, writer, writing, writing groups
Tagged Arts, Arts and Entertainment, Covent Garden, Literature, London, loose muse, poet, poetry, Poetry cafe, poetry. writer, Women's writing in English, writer, Writers Resources, writing
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Roughly sculpted for Dverse
This is all edges and unfinished surfaces – a quick and dirty poem in response the the prompt at dVerse set by Victoria C Slotto.
Views
It begins.
The tickle of water, receding.
Wave upon wave.
As each subsides
a little more is bared.
Pate, brow, eye sockets.
Cast within iron he
shivers. Breadth of shoulder,
length of back, girth of thigh,
exposed to find
another place.
Same horizon, different sky.
Grains settle between cold toes.
Newly arrived on flooding tide
from worlds away –
dumb, their stories unreachable.
In grim silence sand and iron
miscommunicate.
Moon call, tide turns.
water returns to cover calves
waist, neck.
He merely stands, feet fixed, head fixed,
eyes fixed while his world of sky
and sea
and sand
swirls around him.
Now he sees it.
Now he doesn’t.
The sculptures I have chosen as inspiration are on the beach at Crosby, Liverpool – Another Place by Antony Gormley.
Posted in Antony Gormley, artists, Dversepoetry, poet, poetry, sculpture, sea, Uncategorized, writer, writing
Tagged Another Place, Antony Gormley, Art, Arts, one stop poetry, Online Writing, poet, poetry, poetry. writer, Sculpture, Victoria C Slotto, writer
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All my dogs are leaving home – just a little doggerel!
It's all my fault!
One by one they leave to roam
the fields and nearby ditches.
One of them has moved next door,
another hides all day in hedges.
Ignoring calls and tasty treats
they trot off every morning
throwing glowering backward glances
at the cause of all their trouble…
He’s four months old and black as tar
with energy unbounded.
He steals their food,
he chews their toys,
plays cuckoo in their favourite beds.
He squeals and yaps and tugs their ears
and puddles every where. He offends
their sensibilities and hides their choicest treats.
And so, they leave to spend their days
wherever he is not and then at dusk
as the mercury falls and the mist
seeps up from the river. To the hoot
of the owl and the scent of the fox
they all come home for dinner.
My daughter has left me dog-sitting for Chester (a pugalier and well behaved) and Cav ( a cavapoo, a four month old puppy) while she accompanies a school ski-ing trip.
I would swap the pup for sixty energetic, hormone flooded teenagers on a ski slope any day!
Posted in dog walks, dogs, Family, free verse, online writing, poet, poetry, Uncategorized, wildlife, writer, writing
Tagged dogs, family, garden, Online Writing, pets, poet, poetry, poetry. writer, puppies, writer
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Objects into poetry for dVerse
For the first time in ages, this is my response to today’s dVerse.com challenge to poeticise (!) an object. The inspiration for this is the French writer Francis Ponge.
From my computer I can see a gang of long tailed tits attacking the buggy pellets in one of the bird feeders – this is my attempt to transform them into poetry…
Long-tailed Tits
Tail on a puff ball
crackle-voice of
nutshells underfoot.
Tear-drop nest, woven from
moss, spider silk, lichen-flakes,
feather bedded chicks.
Fuss, food,
fuss, fellowship
all in an apricot cloud.
The gang
The nest
Posted in birds, Dversepoetry, free verse, garden, imagism, online writing, poet, poetry, Uncategorized, writer, writing
Tagged Arts, birds, Francis Ponge, garden, long tailed tit, Natural, natural world, Online Writing, poet, poetry, poetry. writer, wildlife, writer, writing
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Fate of the rummage box or, how the green dot lived to fight another day
The first Country Market after Christmas was bound to be a slow affair, and in our efforts to discover what would appeal to the clientèle, we had over produced the Christmas card range. No problems, a great January clear-out with ‘can’t be missed’ prices was the ‘obvious’ answer. Everyone holds a January Sale don’t they?
Luck would have it that, after the initial set-up, I was manning the stall alone. Now, I am not the chatty, cheerful, approachable one. I tend to skulk behind the display trying desperately not to put off potential buyers with my scowl. I can’t help it, my default facial expression is, if not exactly grim, then … no, it is grim!
So, there I am, lurking behind the big SALE posters, when I feel a tug on my jumper. One of the most pleasant organisers is trying to attract my attention in the most low key way possible, to save my embarrassment I am sure, as she explains that Country Market rules do not allow sales. I am perplexed and say so. Then I realise that many of the products, produced by more canny marketeers carefully avoid being too seasonal and so have year round appeal. Very necessary of course when one considers that a hand stitched picture of a garden in bloom must have taken many, many hours to produce.
We agree that I will fold the signs to block out the word Sale, though the Rummage Box, containing many of the items, each marked with a green dot to denote a reduced price of 50p, is allowed to remain.
Time passes, I have my cup of (free to marketeers) tea and manage to keep up with the brisk (by January market standards) sales of cards, I even manage to sell one of the anthologies ( A Toe in the Water by Paragram) – a major coup as the reason for us being here at all is to widen the market for our writing…selling the cards made from our watercolour sketches is just a by-line.
Another tap on my elbow, and the same person, crouched a little now, as if to minimise her profile, whispers that, the consensus is that the words ‘Rummage Box’ by their very nature, speak of sale items, and, as already established, that contravenes Market rules. I take a look around to find that several other producers will not meet my eye, while a couple are peering gleefully at me over their displays. With outward equanimity, I remove the sign that invites customers to rummage. More time passes and sales continue to trickle along…
…until, half an hour before the market closes, I am visited for a third time.
‘The green dots,’ whispers a small voice from behind my left shoulder, ‘remind one of blue crosses – you know, as in ‘blue cross sale!’
I turn but am too late to manage to say a word to the poor messenger. This time, I do nothing as I reign in my frustration. Later, I painstakingly write 50p on every label, in the red ink that is specified by the market. They are now not ‘sale’ stickers, but are price labels, albeit the wrong colour.
As I am ready to leave, the co-ordinator approaches, smiling. I pre-empt her comments by explaining …
… of course the green dots are not ideal, but they were the only labels I had to hand, that in future I would stick to the required white labels, but of course, in this day of sustainability and minimising of waste, she surely wouldn’t be asking me to remove them, especially when that would also mean renewing the plastic wallets that protect each card and how I hate using the wallets because they are not easily bio-degradable yet have not found a viable alternative and so cannot see my way to such waste even though the green is not ideal…
… I could have carried on with my spiel, but by now she was backing away her smile fixed in the face of my, (painfully) pasted-on, enthusiastic grin and expression of ( I hoped) environmental conscience.
Don’t misunderstand me. I am concerned for the environment. I do hate the plastic protectors we seem to have to use, I do abhor waste. But not usually with such missionary zeal!
Glum Bunny and the green dot live on...
Sally J Blackmore's Blog 