I stood up at the Mega Poetry Slam in Durham

It was on Thursday 1st in benefit of a Mental Health Centre in Waddington St and 30 poets were there to take part so it was MEGA. I came second in my group of 5 and that is no mean feat for someone who has made so few public spectacles of herself.
Thank you to Amanda Baker for cheering me on and for taking this photo.

Amanda has a CHARITY event of her own coming up on
October 4th
8:30 - 9:45
Morpeth Rugby Club

for Pearl of Africa Child Care Ltd. Charity No 1122809


SNAIL LOVE  be there if you can.
Amanda is a wondeful entertainer and Edinburgh Fringe Poet and FUNNY with it :)

Holy Island July and August

The best thing to do is make like sheep - wander about a bit and graze at leisure, find the odd watering hole and stop a while, wander and graze again. I don't think enough people do that. We're all so busy rushing around with scowls on our faces. Even the Island doesn't elicit a smile from some, so busy are they making themselves unhappy - want want want! I even heard some people talking about shopping in the supermarket. W?H?Y? Have we really become so souless? And my wee camera clicked away and took a few visual memories, yes but there were folk with tripods and zoom lenses stacked like dinner plates.

We went back to retrieve the coat that had been left hanging in the wardrobe the first time :) Not that any excuse was needed. It had been too long and visits were well overdue and it was lovely to get reacquainted with our friend and with the island. I'll be back soon.

The Farne Islands as seen from Lindisfarne and Bamburgh Castle on the Northumerland Coast, right.

Every Day Inspirations June 2011 Photos

Inspiration 2011/06/06

Armchair Observations - about the poems

The first of these Armchair Observations came on the 5th Dec 2010 with one of the most astounding NASA photos of the day. How can the moon shine through a mountain? It turned out to be to do with and anticrepuscular (ah a new word :) ) shadow. The sunset had projected a shadow of the mountain onto the twilight sky and the moon was rising through that shadow. It is a stunning aspect and immediately brought to my mind the masonry image of the all seeing eye, the pyramids, and how I as the observor seemed almost to play the role of the Sun. When you see something as spectacular as that it is bound to be insipring. The colours and the eerie sight washed over me and so my first reaction was 'O' and with that exclamation came a week of inspriation and to be honest determination to write a poem a day to suit whatever NASA threw at me.

Could I pull it off? Well the 6th December proved no less interesting. The circled shapes of the universe became thematic and this time we had alien life as well - arsenic loving bacteria, DNA that was totally different from ours, living in this volcanic soup bowl like little white beans in blue minestrone. And there I was again looking down from a height, transported from my office chair to another place with other life and yet so far I hadn't left the planet Earth. And I thought WOW this is amazing, what if the human race failed to survive? Would these bacteria begin an evolution of their own? And I began to write.

When it came to the 7th I was well and truly hooked and I could think of nothing more minimalist for a Black Hole than haiku - the perfect combination. So vast/so small and so ver COMPACT :)

And the next day the Rover Opportunity explores the Intrepid Crater on Mars. It could be the opportunity for a poem about sand without picnics, I thought... Mars is so far. I've written about a bottle of water on Mars in "Clear Sailing" also on BwS. It seems so distant and rusty compared to our silvery moon. I wonder will we ever walk there too?

 11.8 million light-years away in the northern constellation Ursa Major lay the inspiration for the next poem. Ursa Major is of course the Great Bear and so Arp's loop in my mind became a swirling soup and so another poem was born and I think it turned out 'just right' ;)

On the 10th December it was the colours mostly that inspired the poem and the net of tree twigs over the moon. I thought of lace and veils and weddings then and from the NASA decription came the line,
"The thin rim of a day-old moon occulting Mars"
occulting - such a wonderfully adjectival verb!



The poem for the 11th Dec was about a spear of green light that streaked across the sky during the annual Leonid's shower. It was like one of those Spcae Oddessy moments. You think how could early man have failed to be inspired by such sights as this? How can we fail to be inspired every time we look up and realise we are travelling through the universe on this small shpere we call home? That sudden flash of light inspired me.
But Oh

that impertinent pointer
streaks the sky

green

 screams
look up, look up,
look at me
potential.

 Lift your mind out of the dust of Earth
lift your mind out of the dust of
man and see
Oh see what dust can do
what dust can be.

When I saw the Torre de la Guaita with the leonid trails whizzing round it just reminded me of my 'coolest' ever pressy - and LED lights fan that whizzes coloured ever changing patterns round when switched on and so I wrote this last one http://www.bewilderingstories.com/issue428/observatory7.html

I have to admit I was surprised and delighted that this series turned out as well as it did from a spur of the moment exercise and it just goes to show that it pays to write - just write... and see what transpires

Armchair Observatory

An entire series of poems, Armchair Observations, I call them, inspired by a week of NASA pictures of the day is beginning now at Bewildering Stories. I really did write a poem a day for a week beginning Dec 5th 2010, no matter what the picture of the day was, I wrote about it and now the first of these are up at BwS. The others will be published one a week for the next 6 weeks, each poem with a link to its picture of origin so you can see my muse. But whilst the pictures came from way out there, in space, the allusions, themes and language came from within. I hope you will follow the series.

I just love that it coincided with the 700th edition of The Sky at Night. For me, as for so many others, including Brian May and Dr. Brian Cox; whose Wonders of the Universe, (BBC2 Sundays at 9) I am also watching avidly; Patrick Moore introduced me to a lifelong fascination for all things related to the exploration of space.  So in a way I suppose he inspired these poems too.

Two new stories up now

Living the Lie at EDF

The Strange Disappearance of Simon Soght at MicroHorror

Westminster Hall Baltimore

This is where Edgar Allan Poe is interred and where his memorial stands

Grave

memorial

and it is not far from the hospital where he died. I wish I could have gone inside but it was closed for rennovation. The light inside looks wonderful; and the space itself. I pressed my lens to the glass doors and snapped anyway.

The camera lens did not capture the shafts of light spilling into the space and it's a rather narrow angle on this impressive interior but you get some idea. I wanted to be inside testing the accoustics with a rousing chorus but it was not to be. Next time :)