Turquoise and Orange (by sarah)

Ok this is a follow on from why I've decided to not worry about my first publishing rights. I have expanded this to my poetry first off - this is now going up on Turquoise Monster this renders the poems I post useless for most anthologies and competitions but I'm sick of sending off all the poems wasting all that paper and enverlopes to get like £20 $6 etc... of course I still have a few poems that can't go up yet due to them being published in newspapers and stuff.

I decided it would be better to produce a book of my own - of poetry - I'll still send stuff off to the charity anthologies as I feel thats important but I feel that this sending off to have the poem appear once in something read by like 150 people is really starting to stunt my growth as a poet.

I have observed that most sales come from doing slams and talks and conferences and even those poets published the traditional way have ended up having to wave their books around saying 'please buy'.

I am also a 'niche' poet so finding someone willing to publish a poetry collection would be difficult. I plan to illustrate the poems for the actual 'books' and have infact been producing a visual poetry journal for sale in Ammerica.

I origonally decided I had to have a poetry website as people have been asking me where they can get my poems to read - and [A Picture of Words}(http://turquoise.monsters.wigglypets.co.uk/?p=12) has been taken by two seperate teachers to use as a classroom aid which made me very happy - they did ask first 🙂

I think obsqurity is more of a danger to my poetry career than piracy to be quiet honest - plus poetry really isn't a big earner - the top poetry books still sell minute numbers compared to say fiction books.

So that is why I am doing this with the poetry - [Orange Monster}(http://orange.monsters.wigglypets.co.uk/) on the other hand is where I am putting out my Children's books ideas.

There is a slightly different reasoning behind this one and it has nothing to do with the publishing industry and everything to do with Jean.

I came across a picture book alternative to NaNoWriMo called Picture Book Idea Month or PiBoIdMo the idea is you produce 30 picture book ideas in 30 days - I thought why not.

And I thought this becuase I've got lots of picture book ideas rattling about and none of them have been brought to completion and Jean is actually starting to get a bit old - at least for the board book ideas. After having made her the Little Book of Spoogy Poetry I thought I can use PiBoIdMo to give her all these stories - most of which she has inspired.

This way they might actually get written and enjoyed by her before she's too old. Weather I will go on to publish any of these I do not know but I plan to make the little books like I did at Halloween and one of the ideas you might all be getting for a christmas presant so you have been warned!

Right I suppose I should actually get on and do some work now!

The Little Book of Spoogy Poetry (by sarah)

I've been quiet sick this week again - as in I've had several days where I couldn't function at all - today I'm a bit better though still having dizzy spells and being very very tired but I decided to create for Jean The Little Book of Spoogy Poetry.

Spoogy is the word she tends to say instead of spooky and she really likes Halloreen stuff and kept asking for stories and rhymes - so this morning I wrote the first half of a story I hope to have finished for Saturday for her it's called Hetty Peglar's Tump after a local earthworks.

Anyway I realised I wasn't going to get a chance to illistrate the story for her before then and I really wanted to do some halloween drawings for her so I thought I'd do a poetry book instead.

No I wrote all the poems today and I junked about 1 and half times what I've put in and they are well... mostly rhyming and Jean specific so I ain't going to win no great prizes with them but Jean seems to like them.

I'll be putting the poems on Turquoise Monster and how I made the book on Salaric Carft. But until then here are a few of the pages with the pictures pre-binding.

The Maiden’s Dream (by sarah)

I have put my poem The Maiden's Dream up on Turquoise Monster it is a rhyming one that is supposed to portray a sense of fairy tale magic.

Again Feedback would be appreciated 🙂

A Picture of Words (by sarah)

I have put the poem A Picture of Words on Turquoise Monster - the poem is about the structure of language and is a play on 'A picture paints a thousand words' I thought well what would a picture made of language - made of words actually look like?

I would love feed back on it 🙂

Thanks

Sarah

Poetry Cafe 2 (by sarah)

During the Literature Festival there was a fringe event called Poetry Cafe held at the Museum and Art Gallery in Cheltenham and I was reading!

Due to competition from other events it wasn't as well tended as the first one in September but I ended up going back up to read twice! That is two more times after my initial reading 🙂

I also bumped into someone I hadn't seen for a while who was very excited as he has 'always loved my work' 🙂 and got even more excited when I pointed out I now had a poetry blog.

I read:

The Markov Chains of Literature

A Little Chaos

The Break-Up

I Want

The Baby-Wocky