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.

mlatu and Mother Lang (by sarah)

Last night Mary said her first full and clear Lojban word mlatu meaning cat, she has been saying contractions and muddled versions of words such as dui for ladiu (milk) and of course saying half English half Lojban words. But this was really clear - it came after a day of her pointing to the cats and asking me 'Cat?', to the kitten - 'cat?' yes, 'baby?' yes, 'itten?' yes, 'baby ca?' yes and so on. Then when Alaric had her and the kitten on his lap she said 'mlatu' to which he responded yes.

I'v been working on this concept of making a language primer starting with English and Lojban, it started with lojbani chicken and I have been constructing characters ever since. As part of teaching Mary lojban Al had drawn a face and written the lojban words on it so I thought you know I should get a move on with this and draw Mother Lang's face so we can make a proper version of this.

And so I have. Of course I had to completely finish designing her first which ment drawing all of her! That picture is still a pencil sketch! I'm happy with this one. The idea is that she is the Mother of Language, she has two daughters Coni and Nat who represent constructive languages and natural languages and they live on a farm with such creatures as Lojbani Chicken etc...

War of the Words (by sarah)

Saturday (20th April 2013) will see me taking part in the Cheltenham Poetry Festival Slam! It takes place at Copa in Cheltenham and is £7 or £5 for concessions.

I am desperately trying to memorise some newer poems for this! If anybodies about came and see some fantastic poets (not me the other guys!).

Lojbani Chicken or jbojipci (by sarah)

Just before we moved to the new house I came up with the idea of Lojbani Chicken, a character who would help Jean or anybody else understand and learn Lojban but I wanted it to be more than that. I wanted some sort of all languages web-comic thing which is obviously very complex and so it never happened - there were some biro sketches in the back of a note book and that was that.

Then I saw this year is Lojban's 25th and so I sat down and revisited the idea of my chicken. The result was more biro sketches and Mother Lang and her two daughters Coni and Nat, they live on a farm where Lojbani chicken is one of the animals.

A full first story will hopefully be appearing on Wiggly Pets soon 🙂

Once the image above is digitally edited (this is just what I russeled up using my new birthday pens and colouring pencils.) there will be speech bubbles saying such things as fi'i - meaning welcome.

Other existing characters include Esperanto Cat and Toki Pona kitten. I haven't decided yet what creatures should represent any of the natural languages - mainly due to worrying about offending people :/ I might do something like have made up creatures for natural languages and real animals for the constructed languages - suggestions welcome 🙂

I am hoping to produce some more of the characters as part of the 100 birds in 100 days challenge I am currently doing over on Orange Monster.

Fooling Around With Poetry and What Not (by sarah)

April the 1st and the first thing that happened was Youtube suggested that they were closing down youtube as a five year competition was over to choose the best video in the world. I didn't watch very much of the video and quickly moved on.

Second thing to happen was I saw people lambasting others for pulling the 'I'm expecting/pregnant' joke on Facebook updates.

Third thing that happened was that I decided to hide until 12 when traditionally you stop the April Fool pranks otherwise they are said to back fire. Instead I have been preparing myself for more poetry madness!

NaPoWriMo 🙂

I am doing visual poetry books this time - 30 of them 🙂 And generally going to be spending 30 hrs this month on poetry (not that hard as I am going to be taking part in the Cheltenham Poetry Festival anyway!).

Anyway there will be more exercises and writing inspiration and how to on the WoPoWriMo site and here is the NaPoWriMo site for those interested.