Spoogy Woogy Oooogy! (by sarah)

Monday night I inflicted my childrens poetry on an audience in the Waterstones Cheltenham as part of the Villanelles series run by The Gloucester Poetry Society.

This beautiful photo of the reading was taken by Kurt Schroeder Photography which is a challenge as I can't really do flash photography and the light levels were poor!

The The Little Book of Spoogy Poetry has been getting out and about again - Last weekend saw me take the baby yeti (Alaric) to Cheltenham Library along with El Nosy Rat for the Fun Palaces Event.

It's interesting to note that the outfit Alaric is wearing is the reason there is a poem with the line "One Daddy dressed as a Yeti" in it and now he puts the outfit on for the poetry readings! It was originally made for a Yeti Hunt when we first started up the Cranham Scouting sections 🙂

At the poetry readings he is a naughty baby yeti who is also very shy and has a habit of hiding until the children call him to come out! This time the baby yeti stole Jean's shoes! When I took him to the climbing wall he kept hanging upside down! That baby YETI!

El Nosy Rat also features in one of the poems which he is a bit disgruntled about as it feels it gives rats a bad name! He is a relatively new member of the performance team and is also known as Ratty The Plague Rat/Black Death Rat when he comes out on Cuddly Science outings 🙂

He is a big hit with the kids and talks with a bit of an Eastend twang. In the photo above he his holding on of the lovely cloth patches of the Mummy Eating Cherry Pie (one of the poems and illustrations from the book). I had these made last year and they are in some of my surprise pouches! These were made by White Wizard Purple Elf who also made Jean's beautiful dark fairy hoody. Talking of surprise pouches I did kind of forget I they were also glitter bombs so covered the Children's Library in glitter 0.o

Last year I also spent ages tracing some of the pictures from the book so that I could turn them into black and white colouring sheets. The idea is that eventually all the illustrations will be up for free down load and maybe even as an actual colouring book. I tend to be a bit slow going with this as I do a little bit every September and October. But it did mean that this year I had lots of pictures ready for digital clean up and conversion to colouring in sheets 🙂

I am steadily popping them all on WigglyPets Press - including the older ones I made which have some colour traits like the pumpkin outlines being orange 🙂

There are still quiet a few to be traced and scanned still but that along with new audio files will have to await my new computer!

And talking of audio files don't forget you can listen to the poems on my bandcamp though it is still missing it's story and song to be a proper collection 🙂

Or you can watch a much younger Jeany reading the poems and a baby Mary trying to join in 🙂

I only have about 20 of my original print run left, after they have gone the book will be a more expensive print on demand thing on Amazon. And a second volume is also wending it's way to completion 🙂

But that will be a tale for another year!

But before I leave you I shall explain why it is the Spoogy book and not a Spooky book - when she was 4 yrs old Jean asked me if we could make a poetry book for halloween and so we did about topics she picked... that book was all hand drawn and written and did not contain all ten poems that later appeared in The Little Book it also got a cup of water knocked over on it shortly after it's creation as Jean has it in her tray table next to her bed - the tray table where she was allowed her night time water as if it was spilt it would all stay in the tray!

The 4 yr old Jean could not say Spooky - 4 yr old Jean said Spoogy and the book was for her, I've been asked to change it for "proper" publication but the poems are what they are - first and for most for my kids and the Spoogy bit is an essential part of that. If you are interested here is the blog post from when I made the book back in 2009.

Fun Palace Coming to Cheltenham Library 2017 :) (by sarah)

Last year we went to a grass root community event in a disused shop in Gloucester organised by Nickie Wildin. It was part of a national movement of Fun Palaces, to fight austerity and bring arts, science and culture to... well... EVERYONE - this is one of the centre tenants to both Cuddly Science and Salaric Craft - me and Alaric believe that science and art are for everyone.

You can read and see photos of last years event here.

This year we are at Cheltenham Library on Saturday the 7th of October 2017 organised by Stephanie Organ and boy do we have a line up! There is poetry by Angela France, robots with Oh Bot who we met at the Cheltenham Science Festival, there are language sessions, crafting, Cheltenham Hackspace... and so on - just check out the posters!

I am there as both Cuddly Science and Salaric Craft complete with puppets, Alaric dressed as a yeti and surprise poetry pouches!

I am just a little bit excited about this!!!

Poetry Without Pretension (by sarah)

So we did it 🙂 We got the kickstarter completely funded and now we have a book in production! Above is the front cover and the beauty of this book is just mind blowing but then I would say that I am publishing it!

Or rather The WigglyPet's Press is publishing it 🙂

For those of you who missed the kickstarter - this is the Gloucester Poetry Societies first book to mark their first year anniversary. It is being published to coincide with the first Gloucester Poetry Festival. You will be able to purchase it from the The WigglyPet's Press site as well as via amazon and other platforms, not to mention the book will be doing the rounds at local craft and art fairs in the run up to Christmas.

15 Hrs to Go!!!! (by sarah)

The kickstarter for the Gloucester Poetry Society's book Poetry Without Pretension has made it's goal!

This is epic and fantastic and lots of whooping is occurring and... there are still 15 hours left in which people can jump on board and get themselves some exciting goodies such as custom made wiggly pets, origami cranes and beautiful fine art prints!

Thankyou to everyone who has already backed the project - it means a hell of a lot that the poetry book actually got funded 🙂

Art That Needs To Be… (by sarah)

As I write this there is about 60hrs left on the Gloucester Poetry Societies Kickstarter for their first ever poetry book Poetry Without Pretension. It is a beautiful book full of not just poems but art works and write ups on the poets that have helped create it. The visuals are amazing and are part of the reason that this book needs to be a physical thing and not just an ebook.

The project is so nearly there but as is it an all or nothing project - it could still fall at the last hurdle and that would be tragic. It is a piece of art that needs to be!

We are only about £200 away from our goal, one of the rewards on the kickstarter is basically just pre-ordering the book. To temp those of you still umming and ahhing, here are some of the art works.

This one is a live drawing of one of the poetry workshops I run, the artist Julie Green sat in the room and drew her heart out.

These beautiful bird pictures were created by the artists Dave Seed.