Me Bucky Balls and All (by sarah)

Thursday the 12th of July saw me at the Grain Barge performing geek poetry, throwing knitting and inflicting my sense of humour on people.

We turned up and there was some classical science equipment set up - which is always 'ooooo do you think there will be fire and explosions and glowing stuff?'.

The show got started with the comedic Steve proclaiming he had super powers - he the guy who organises and entertains between the acts.

The first act was Jim Bell with his spiders which the brave Suze who is very scared of them, managed to hold momentarily with lots of squeaking.

Then it was time for the fire and glowing stuff but alas no explosions 🙁

Then it was on to Sophia with her set on why parents are so annoying.

At some point a red nose appeared just to remind me that Clowns exist shudders

Then we had Joe Wright and a very funny sketch and video about Darwin - including all the mistakes in the video 🙂

Then we had Nicole Slavin and opera about STIs.

We then had a break were instead of talking to the people who had come to see me I was hovering waiting for a laptop to work so that my first power point in 6 yrs could be shown and to make it worse it wasn't actually a power point :/

But then we had the Science of Cocktails and me being me I announced to the room that I like the frothy head :/ Which Suze who was doing the talk gracefully sailed over.

Then there was Sam Phippen with his funny stories of Robots that kids build.

Then there was me - I was so nervous

Here is the video

And yes I corpsed and yes I got flustered and yes someone nicked my knitted bucky ball!

Then we had a talk on Viruses!

And then to finish off we had the halarious nerd rock of Mark Lewney.

Make Good Art or Get Creative (by sarah)

This speech by the writer Neil Gaimon I found extremely powerful especially for someone like me who has to do creative things to survive.

But also the fact that I have not done things the normal way and that I keep hitting barriers such as I don't have an art degree so therefore do not count as an artist for some people. I am in a space inbetween. When I hear or read that others have not done it the normal way either it gives me hope.

Also I feel encouraged that I am not the only person who finds that trying to do projects for money fail and end up leaving you worse off than you started but the ones you do because it's a fun idea race ahead and are successful.

He mentions the changing landscape of publishing too which for me is an emotive subject - I really think I am going to continue on my own path with my blogs and getting my own CDs printed and what have you. I have tried traditional publishing twice now and both time the company has gone bust or something similar - one still having the rights to the work I'd done so I didn't even end up with it and worse they have not done anything with it :/

My first attempt at crowd funding has been a huge success 🙂 So I am very happy with that.

He mentions throwing bottles into the sea and then they all start coming back and you have to learn to say no. And you know - this is actually happening - though I would say I have been shouting into the void and now the echos are not only coming back but are bouncing and reflecting and propagating and I am having to turn things down! (But please still ask as I may not be doing stuff that weekend etc... or like with the Stroud Water Festival - what I was supposed to be doing may have been canceled).

I do feel a bit weird though it is just like suddenly I am this person that people know of - I'm getting pounced by people who I do not know who start chatting to me about my art (ok well this has always happened quiet alot but frequency has increased!).

It is bizar but I do feel like a fake - really? Me? That thing I made in the middle of the night? That story I wrote whilst breast feeding the baby at 5 am? The knitting I did at a festival whilst listening to my favourite local bands? That really? You like it?

It is not all positive feedback mind - one of my best friends hates my songs, I was accused at the Poetry Festival of being arrogant as my business cards say Artistic Scientist and Scientific Artist. Alaric cringes at my Wiggly Pet stories and visual puns. Performance poets see me as a page poet, page poets see me as performance or worse experimental and the artists are scared or the science part and the scientists are like 'you have no PhD!' and I have people ranting at me over spelling mistakes on my blogs...

But....

That is small compared to what is coming back to me at the moment. I keep thinking I'm so lucky how has this come about? But it is such a knife edge world really - I'm getting bookings now but 6 months down the line? And also it still isn't actually making money 🙁 And what it does make tends to be for charity.

But you know people are excited about Ballads of the Scientifica and there have been requests for a Wiggly Pet book and for t-shirts with things like my Normali Tea picture on.

If you watch/listen to Neils speech he says make good art, I would change that to Get Creative.

When I tore the ligaments in my ankle and had to be flown home from a field trip in the desert I GOT CREATIVE - I made Wiggly Pets

When I had to take a year out for medical treatment to my back - I GOT CREATIVE - I began writing and designed a series of childrens' science stories.

When I found myself having nearly died, and crippled from childbirth, boiling with anger and fear - I GOT CREATIVE - I started writing a novel and so was found in a cafe by the now Cheltenham Poetry Festival Director.

When our house was flooded I GOT CREATIVE and designed childrens activities to entrain my toddler.

When I got shingles and had to rest and give up the Master degree for the second time I found the Paleo Art community and began drawing trilobites and things.

When I was devastated about miscarriage I constructed The Punk In Pink personality.

When I was petrified of going to the hospital to have little Mary I wrote poems about that fear and about having a separated pelvis.

When we were being chucked out of our home I made a poem about how the home is not the building but the people with in.

And so on. There is an even larger list of good times and being creative but that would make this post silly long! 🙂

Basically as I have struggled to build my own serendipity funnel and have just reached my perceived tipping point and this talk resonated so strongly that it made me cry (yes I know that will be the hormones).

If you haven't already listen to it 🙂 But most of all Get Creative!

Stroud Water Festival 40 yrs Party (by sarah)

Last weekend we went to the Stroud On Water Festival for me to read my poetry - it was on our wanting to do list anyway so I was very happy to be asked and in some ways wish we had been able to spend the whole weekend there but obviously I had originally been booked for another festival which had to be canceled due to flooding. (Today we are off to another wet looking festival!).

It was a lovely festival with victorians wondering in to listen to poetry.

I got fed coffee, eton mess and other goodies whilst listening to the other poetry - Alaric and girls missed my performances which was a shame.

After the poetry we wondered about and bought plants and things and looked mainly at bees!

It was the 40th anniversary of the beginning of the restoration of the canals - so here are some photos of work on the canals 🙂

They had a steam roller!

But for me I think the highlight of the day was that as Alaric and the girls left a tent I heard '....good to see the Gotye impersonator has bought his children along...' I missed the rest of the conversation so am not sure it was Alaric that was ment but I think it must have been 🙂 On top of that random people he meets are now saying the same to him :/

Stroud Site Festival Slam and Career-ness (by sarah)

Friday saw me in Stroud for my frist ever poetry slam - and I was so nervous. It was part of the Stroud Site Festival and was run by Marcus Moore and Sara-Jane Arbury.

Over the last few years I have done quiet alot of poetry readings including some performance stuff but not a slam. Not a situation where I felt I had to have the poem memorised. I did a Flash Fiction Slam in Oxford about two weeks ago but again I was reading from sheets of paper. My mother keeps saying it's the same as when I did acting but I was mostly back ground people and had a few words or sentences punctuated by other people which acted as prompts.

As a result I performed No Wage Slave as that was the one I am the strongest with having performed it so much recently. I also now have I Hate Race Week and Hopscotch (most the time) memorised. I am working on memorising more.

On top of that I've been looking at Science Communication courses but then found myself being asked if I could come in and give a talk to scientists about using art and crafts to help with thought patterns and communication. So am re-thinking this especially as there are only burseries for doing it full time which would defeat it being part of what I have already built up.

As it is I am pretty much booked up for the summer and now have a couple of events already in the calendar for the Autumn.

I am trying to learn to drive mainly as my main limitation at the moment is how to get home from performances and events etc... I would love to do more stage stuff, maybe some TV and radio too. Which was part of why I was looking at the Science Communication courses - its the work placements and the science writing I would like.

Not sure if I told everyone I now have a home page / hub for my various websites - it is not all that good at the moment but I am getting little time to work on it at the mo!

Also I now only need £15 for the sensory cave to be built but I am running out of time! So please sponsor me there are lots of fab things I am willing to send people who back my project and extra money goes towards a science-art exhibition in March next year that I am organising with a local art gallery.

Shy (by sarah)

Monday mornings are my child free time so that is when the main creativity activity occurs - this isn't the most creative time but more the time in which I can complete projects and bring ideas finally to bear fruit.

Yesterday I recorded what I envision as a sound track to a shot visual video - it is my first ever hammond organ piece of music and I have been working on it for weeks! Then there is my poem shy.

Alaric is chuffed with it as it means his prediction about what would happen if we got the organ has come to pass! He also says the effect is very surreal.

I can't get the embed to work at the moment so here is the link.