Things We Are Up Too :) (by sarah)

Sun 20th of Jan - Waterstones Presents Villanelles with the Gloucester Poetry Society 2-4 pm in the cafe Waterstones Gloucester free entry

Thurs 31st of Jan - an evening with Holly McNish and fellow poets at Blackfriars Gloucester (sold out)

February World Poetry Writing Month - or WoPo - a writing drive I have been running for nearly a decade now, it runs through out Feb and I pop up writing exercises and various inspirational bits including guest bloggers and I have some fantastically talented people lined up as guest posters this year 🙂 There is also a Facebook group and page and posts will appear on TheMonsterBlogs twitter and the Pinterest board.

Thurs 7th Feb - First Thursday The Enduring Eye at the Wilson Museum and Art Gallery Cheltenham Sarah will be presenting a poetic response to the polar exploration exhibition, free event and part of regular series: On the first Thursday of the month a cultural hub of food, music, performance, art and retail – all within walking distance and outside of traditional working hours – will come together along Clarence Street, Royal Well Road, St George’s Place and Church Street. First Thursdays is a public event and free to attend. The cultural quarter stays open until 9pm or later on the first Thursday of every month

Mon 11th of Feb - Cheltenham Poetry Festival Slam Qualifier 7:30 pm Playhouse Theatre Cheltenham, £5 tix

Sun 17th of Feb - Waterstones Presents Villanelles with the Gloucester/shire Poetry Society 2-4 pm free event - this event is now on the third Thursday of each month bar April as it clashes with Easter Sunday.

Sat 23rd of Feb - Folk Craft and Story Telling at the Folk Museum Gloucester (also known as the Life Museum) this is a free event as part of the Folk Trail during the Gloucester Folk Festival. Based in the Dairy and Victorian School Room out the back of the museum - sadly due to structural work the actual museum will be closed but the diary, cider press room and garden will be open. We will be running Rag Rug and Barge Painting workshops in the Dairy and story telling (including Aethelflead the puppet) in the Victorian School Room!

New Years and Slither Moons (by sarah)

It is the 7th of January and not the 1st - this year I specifically didn't push myself to blog, post, reply to emails or even write in my diary. The intensity and exhaustion of Christmas meant that I wanted and needed to spread things out. So that is what we have done.

New Years Day we did our walk to welcome the New Year - something I did not manage last year and that too is ok. It was a dreary dark day but there was fire and lights and beautify in the glome. I have already formulated some of the pictures into a twitter poem. And will hopefully get around to posting all the worthy pics - a lot are blurry due to light levels but are keepers due to the compositions and thoughts had whilst taking them!

For know here are the embedded tweets:

The sun sets in murk amongst the clouds that threaten rain or worse, there is ice in the air, but it's warm for the now as this is the dark turn of the year, A New Year is upon us and the fires blaze though electric and demonic red rather than bacon gold #poetrywalk pic.twitter.com/Krp0E3ssxl

— Sarah Snell-Pym (@Saffy) January 2, 2019

The place is The Hill, a high up place of ancient musings that wonderers have makes again and again in iron and in stone and in earthen rings and life it's self, this is a way point for the little humans who come to see the makers in the light of such a short day #poetrywalk pic.twitter.com/1OZffjK54z

— Sarah Snell-Pym (@Saffy) January 2, 2019

The valleys stretch around reminding those that are that those that where saw a different landscape not cut but these rivers but ones more ferocious, once there was even fire in this land & this the storm & the mist that old land, the Land of Legends begins to meld #poetrywalk pic.twitter.com/hosS9RmhaX

— Sarah Snell-Pym (@Saffy) January 2, 2019

And melt into this one, this present in which the thick impenetrable forests have become clumps of trees with mosses & spike plants guarding their perimeters, like the day & the yr & the century & millennia - this is old & it is new. The adults feel chilled the child runs to play pic.twitter.com/4XDmleOKWq

— Sarah Snell-Pym (@Saffy) January 2, 2019

Then I woke on the 2nd to crippling period and a beautiful down of moon slither, morning star (Venues) and birds flying here there and everywhere. I wish it was a better picture but it was a grab and snap before camera battery died with no time for tripods. The image was stark and dynamic, ancient and new and I felt I needed to capture it as a memory.

2018 was an up and down year with AMAZING things like the Aethelflead Festival and being involved with so many festivals and activities - finding out about family history etc... but it was also HORRENDOUS with miscarriage aftermath, another miscarriage, deaths of family members and hospitalisations of others - friends going through hard times and feeling powerless to help - this is the double edged sword of being from a large extended family and having so many wonderful friends. There is much love but also lots of pain - I can't and wouldn't choose not to love or care but sometimes it downs you.

I got to do more acting in 2018 and would like to do more of that in 2019, I also made and created lots of things but didn't complete stuff that should have been completed - not sure if that can be remedied in the coming year - all I can do is try. Already having ideas to try out.

There will be a big push for the publishing and writing side of what I do in the coming year. There are several large projects that have been simmering on back burners that will hopefully get to bloom (mix those metaphors baby!).

But I am not tying the year down to have toos because I can't and it if I try it will just lead to misery. I have put on a lot of weight this last year - I am attempting to shift it - it may take a while it might not be doable but general fitness I can try and sort. I just wish I had more energy in the first place - there is so much I want to do and feel stifled by the restrictions. Jean is helping me - there is apparently an app for everything. Already seen how much my periods affect my strength which was interesting - it was very marked.

Attempting less Facebook but more blogging, twitter, Pinterest etc... I really don't like FB but am tied to it but the fact that many people only interact/contact me via it. I will probably fail at this and end up posting every five mins!

Craft wise there are a lot of projects to finish off, and lots of photos to sort, and picture to draw/scan and music to make (actually practicing some of the instruments I have would be a start).

I will get around to making a proper plan for it all but probably not until my birthday weekend. And talking of birthdays this year is Alaric's 40th so there will have to be something major for that - I am looking forward to theming some sort of get together but he is dallying!

Oh and we have a new kitten - Potassium - she needed rehoming after the council did their Tennent checks and arrived on Christmas Eve much to the children's delight especially Mary who had quiet literally been praying for a kitten!

I will try and submit more work this year and look forward to growing more things at the allotment - issue currently being that the mild weather means the beans that should be coming up late Feb decided to germinate - not sure they will survive but have so far.

So I am heading off into this new year with some trepidation but a good scoop of hope too.

Shooting Stars (by sarah)

Last night I watched the Geminid Meteor Shower - my great Aunt died the morning before and I feel isolated and cut off from the family that surrounded me as a child - she was the last link I had to that really - to that older generation - we all knew she was ill and in her 80's but somehow it still sliced as a knife and I cried and I wasn't sure weather I was crying for her or crying for my nan or the child that was or something else but I just remember all her jewellery and sitting around the kitchen table and darting between hers and my nana house - they were in the council houses at the base of the tower blocks and my great gran was just over the road in the old peoples home and sometimes we'd all go and see her and take her food.

This year has had death and life in it sometimes that spell in-between did not even get to birth. And I am dwelling, the sorrows piling up and threatening to drown me and an apathy is calling as I see the pain once more of those who chose to leave transferred and intensified in those who they have left behind.

So many things to worry about and I can't seem to help stem the tied of hurt and pain and death, I am still trying but the trying is getting harder.

I made mulled cider, hot apples and chocolate milks of varying temperatures and invited people round - they were already invited but I enhanced and kept it that way so as not to disappear into a ball of misery. I had canceled the plans of the previous day as a void yearned and pulled at me and the tears poured from my eyes with both intensity and numbness and there was just me in a pool of warmth that I know was my husbands arms but I did not really see him.

And so I had to make sure we still did something so we watched the stars, my little ice gems of twinkling sky that I know are hotter than fire and ring like bells and the shooting stars are rocks that I love the crystal patterns of and the ripples of cold melt that coat their surface once they have - if they ever do - reach the ground.

When I came to try and write all of this, to share with others what the night of light smudged night was like, it came as a poem.

I watched the shooting stars with my family and friends, there were a few around at in the early evening though the youngest grew bored. The meteors were glorious later on - everyone else had buggered off including my family to great Morpheus or sleep or a warm bed at least - so it was just me and bits of burning rock from space and the mortality pain hit - all of this wonderfulness often over ridden by pain and anguish and all that getting to know the world and just as life fits like a well fitting shoe no long giving blisters - whoompf you are gone to goodness knows where - maybe riding the back of those steaks of light or sitting with the sky daddy, or to be cradled by the arms of Gaia or just a nothing.

I watched the shooting stars remembering that like me they too were star dust and named them after the loved until I ran out of names and then I beheld the others as the lost ones I could not or did not want to know, held them as the sorrowful lonely deaths because though we all ultimately face death alone some of us have to face life on our own in desolation and that is a bone chill blood curdle of a thing that slices at the very humanity of us.

I watched the shooting stars and they reflected in my tears for the losses of this and all years and tears of gratitude at the wonders and spectacles and love that those same years have also brung. I watched the sky rocks blaze. And then folded strips of paper to glow in the dark as wishes, they were of course what we have decided is a star shape though it is pointy and not spherical. Tonight again I will watch the shooting stars.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (by sarah)

Yesterday we went to the allotment to begin the slow down for winter.

Preping the allotment for some fruit canes 🙂 and broad beans, finding frogs which are now safely in Mary's container/fairy garden, digging up the last few root veg that were ready - all yay!

We also have late tomatoes which are still producing green tomatoes so it is time for more chutney making!

Discovering someone has stolen two of my galvanised herb pots turfing my rosemary plant which I grew from seed when we first moved to the cotswolds >:( They left the third so I think they must have gotten interrupted. Big boo >:(

There was also wood smashed up and thrown into one of our planters and the grumpy man who is sometimes there came and stared at me and the kids for a while before moving on :/

Ending with the frog pics because they are cute - Mary has named it Slimey unsurprisingly. It is in the Fairy garden because a) cats b) streamers.

Slimey is pictured her in the empty worry trays that I use for weeding.

Last night was the only opportunity we had to take the kids to fireworks but I hadn't slept properly and then had failed to have a nap so decided not to go with Al and the kids - he say's the fireworks would have been borderline for me as there were a lot of flashing crowns and wands and shoes and I hadn't had a lot of sleep so I made the right decision in not going - I want to get through this November without a seizure as they set me back so far and it's like I've hit my head all over again so I am being extra cautious because I am so much better that I just don't want to risk it - but I felt like a bad parent not going but Al would have had to carry a fold up seat and stuff for me as well and I think it would have made it miserable for everyone if I had gone - we toasted marshmallows over candles when the girls got back and I managed to cook my first meal proper with little mess and no burning or mess ups since the head injury (this is cooking on my own rather than with Al or Jean) - so pretty pleased with that.

However...

TW: miscarriage

Having nightmares at the mo - the next week is going to be tricky but I have craft supplies and have already made a bazzilion cards and keyrings - my plan is to bulldozer through - this is the day last year where I left the house walking and excited about all the awesome stuff I had planned for November and had to be brought home by a friend as thing started to go wrong very quickly and I couldn't even walk properly and felt like I had been hit with the flu hammer - nightmares are of course all hospital based or searching for lost babies/kittens/cute things or failing to rescue them no matter how hard I try - very grateful to the NHS and very aware I wouldn't be here if they hadn't worked so hard - I ended up with a server BP crash and seizure fortunately I was already at the hospital - this one has affected me far harder than the one in the summer - but it was a pregnancy that was older and it was far more traumatic. Trouble is I get cascade so the memories of that hospital trip flash to others including the trips to A&E whilst half way through Jean's pregnancy.

Big irony about this is that I can recall peoples birthdays and I even struggle with things like Christmas but this and the ectopic are burned into me. I accidentally woke Al up crying last night which I wanted to avoid :/

I'm also getting hacked off with myself for still being so drenched in this - it doesn't help that the pelvis has just not really recovered so I have a reminder every time I walk - I basically gave birth to the placenta which was the size of a small baby.

It's eating at my core partly because I fear it was perhaps my last chance to have a baby.

My craft obsession:

Card making is a big thing for me when I am feeling too frazzled or sick to do much else. Alaric bought me supplies, including a Christmas gift box colouring in book.

I've been making cards including ones of my St Oswold's picture I did in the summer.

Last night when I couldn't sleep I remembered I had lots of split rings to make keyrings with - so I combined them with my bracelet charms.

I am making lots of lucky dip pouches to go in the treasure chest.

I have to end the post with my guardian cat - Hydrogen has been through the mill of life and still likes to sit with me and purr. Here she is being a Dragon Cat with her horde of keyrings.

National Poetry Day UK 2018 (by sarah)

Today is National Poetry Day - so I shall be spending the day on various social media sites and blogs sharing all the stuff from the archives - namely the writing exercises and write ups on interesting writers.

Where you can find me:

Saffy
TheMonsterBlogs
Sarah Snell-Pym Writer and Artist
Pinterest Wopo Inspired
Google+

Where you can read my poetry:

Turquoise Monster
Snell-Pym Poetry
Orange Monster
Magenta Monster

Where you can find writing exercises:

World Poetry Writing Month
Magenta Monster

Poetry is a pretty big thing for me - I never thought it was going to be, I kind of thought the whole thing wasn't for me. I like what I like and that has little to do with the academic studies of the poetic form. I like poems in different styles from different times and cultures and so on. I find people being elitist and pretentious about it all... annoying and ignorant.

That is one of the reasons that I have backed the local poetry festivals the way I have - they offered spaces for voices that were rarely heard and the internet also helped.

This month I am lucky in that I am hosting events at the Gloucester Poetry Society and I am taking part in a Slam over in Cheltenham (still not sure about the competition part of the slam culture but I like the events over all and the people I see there - they are fun and diverse).

I've been going through my poetry and trying to decide how best to move forward with it all - I have singularly failed to actually submit work once again but thanks to people chasing me I am in a couple of pamphlets which are to be release later this month I believe.

I have several collections that were stalled with head injury and what not which I should really revisit and sort out and I have a few more zines that are pretty much ready to go!

But I also want to produce more books with other people - I liked WigglyPet Press's involvement with last years poetry anthology but it has now been out for a year so I feel that it is time for me to publish something new!

At the moment I am thinking of something themed around space, the cosmos, exploration and the unknown but I have not decided on the format yet!