I Forgot to Do Any Work (by sarah)

Yesterday I sort of forgot to do any work - after 9 days of intensive festival coverage I awoke tired but happy and helped get the girls off to school mind buzzing with more things to write up about the Cheltenham Poetry Festival. But I had to go to the bank at 10 and somehow this took up the entire morning!

I did find some fantastic bits of wall art to snap whilst out though!

Then my parents and Al had conspired together meaning that I was taken for lunch were I relaxed and ate and drunk and produced the rough first draft of a childrens picture book.

I then came home and slept!

When I got up Jean was home from school and I ended up watching Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs whilst buried in children and kittens. It was then tea time which was eaten in the garden.

With a rabbit for company!

My dad also tried the trampoline.

Then I had a bath and read the book I was given as part of World Book Night during the festival, in bed I wrote two poems and babbled about arty stuff.

Of course today I am staring at the state of the house going eep! And Mary isn't going to let me get much done as I've basically been missing for a week and she is determined to catch up on snugs!

Pinterest (by sarah)

After proddings from several friends I decided to get a Pinterest account. I really love the site - it allows you to share cool photos and images but it also allows you to nicely credit the site it came from and has a policy to help you point out and correct copy right infringement.

I was exstatic to find that some of my images were already on there and linked back to my sites 🙂

I'm 5affy on there but a search of my name will do 🙂

So It Goes (by sarah)

Last night I went to a truly inspiring event - So It Goes by the Cheltenham Improvisers Orchestra at the Cheltenham Poetry Festival.

Sound rippled around the room, building and echoing and fading away to almost nothingness, reminding me of the psychedelic of previous decades mixed with the fragments of poems building up to create a picture of the stretching endless existence.

Pictures of the cosmos played in the back ground and occasionally across on of the performers leaving a silhouette of them, stark in the nebula.

I could have closed my eyes and just listened creating pictures for stories and the like but then I would have missed the spectacles of how they produced some of the sounds - vibrating, glowing massage spider on a balloon for example.

I had great fun taking photos again hence the black and white - I also played around with long exposures to see if I could get an image that captured the essence of the music.

When I spoke to the poets afterwards it turned out they didn't know who was going to read when - this was interesting as the poets seemed to pick up and continue with the style of the previous poet but adapted to them - as if their was an invisible creative string connecting them within the performance.

I really loved this event and could have easily spent all of last night writing - I took quiet a few arty shots:

Poets including Anna Saunders, Adam Horovitz, and Sara-Jane Arbury to name but a few.

Knitted Poem – The Price of Art in Luton (by sarah)

Yesterday I went back into Cheltenham to photograph some more of the events at the Cheltenham Poetry Festival which was brilliant! But before they started I popped over to the Waterstones to see the knitted poem that Centre Arts has had all the local knitting groups taking part in. The poem is The Price of Art in Luton from the John Hegley - part of the Dog collection.

There is also has a knitted homeless guy and his dog on it.

I believe it is being auctioned off at the end of the festival! Alaric being from Luton examined the poem more closely - though in my opinion from the wrong angle!

War of the Words (by sarah)

Last night I went and performed in my fourth ever poetry slam - this time it was War of the Words at the Cheltenham Poetry Festival. As typified by the other slams I came last but I am happy as I performed my best yet in my opinion. I did my poem Shy about selective mutalism and had many people including the other poets commenting on how good it was. There is a very graining video which I want to edit into something at the end of the festival - but here is the recording I did of the poem using the hammond organ last year.

There were some absolutely amazing performers last night including Spoz, Peter Wyton and Ben Norris.