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.
Fri 22nd - Sun 24th Nasty Women Fine Art Show in aid of End Violence Against Women - Stour Space in East London. Sarah's film Love: A Stranger Dream will be showing on loop and the colouring books that accompany it are for sale. There are also lots of other things going on such as workshops, live music and performance as well as art works.
Sun 24th Sept 2-4 pm Villanelles at Waterstones Gloucester - Sarah is hosting a poetry recital, open mic and workshop. Free entry
Thurs 28th Sept 7-8 pm Villanelles Gloucester at the Fountain Inn Gloucester - Sarah is running a poetry workshop followed by performance and interviews. Free entry
From Sat 30th Sept - 31st Oct Frightmare Halloween Festival at Over Farm Gloucester - Sarah will be performing at various points during the Festival.
Fri 6th - Sat 7th Oct 6:30 pm Young G.O.D.S. Presents Alice In Wonderland at Ribston Hall High School - Mary's first ever musical. Donations on the Door
Sat 7th Oct 11 am - 3 pm Cheltenham Fun Palace at Cheltenham Library - Cuddly Science presenting sci-craft workshops, puppets, science poetry, colouring and more. Free Entry
Sat 14th Oct 11 am - 1 pm Ada Lovelace's Coding Time at the Museum of Gloucester. Ticketed £5 concessions £4
Sat 21st Oct 2:30 - 5 pm Food for Thoughts Festival Special at the Cafe Rene Gloucester. Donations on the door
Sun 22nd Oct 2-4 Gloucester Poetry Society at Waterstones Gloucester - Sarah is hosting poetry recitals, open mic and workshop. Free Entry
Thurs 26th - Sun 29th Oct Gloucester Poetry Festival in various venues around Gloucester. Sarah will be hosting, performing etc...at various events through out the festival and there will also be the launch of the latest WigglyPet's Press publication Poetry Without Pretension.
Sat 4th Nov 7-9 pm Villanelles at Diverse City Festival Gloucester Guild Hall. Sarah shall be performing.
More dates yet to be confirmed.
I dreamed that the world had managed a kind of immortality and two people lived the life span of the universe but though this seemed fantastic it wasn't as it meant the whole universe could not move on to it's next cycle - the problem? Cyclic-evolutionary rebirth - those two people were stuck in their mid forms, in the medium of being, they had not lived out their allotted lives and now everyone was stuck. The god made a parasitic/baby universe from the dying one so that they could become and be once more. But they could not exist on their own so others of the universe had to volunteer to become corporeal ghosts to care for the infants and raise them threw their lives. Violent deaths stunted the process of moving up the spiral of lives that had to be lived so each life had to be lived well and just repeatedly killing them as soon as they were incarnate was out of the question.
Things were also hampered by the flesh ghosts who had a tendency to forget what their purpose was and think they were indeed alive. Their minds took the form that they had been in the most and as human form is the medium average for live, the form that most lives were lived in that was the form they mostly inhabited. There were strange effects for those who thought themselves alive - like being able to fly/float if you meditated and with concentration teleportation of a kind was achievable including breathing in space, sometimes the ghosts tried to kill each other which if they had been within the incarnation cycle would have sent them back a rung or two, the god wasn't sure what to do about that behaviour yet and it really was a minority action, hardly noticeable in the positive karmic stew of the new little life bubble.
And so with snow angles and story writing and climbing mountains and star gazing, the universe creeped and crawled closer to it's next cycle. The other gods admonished the god and said they would have just jettisoned the universe rather than mucking around trying to save it but the god could not waste all those souls that were unique and fully formed in this universe - one day they would be strong enough to break out of the universe and become, no there would be no destruction of souls. And besides this was interesting - they had done something not seen in any of the other universes and the god thought that there were lessons to be learned here. The other gods sneered, the god just shrugged and continued to be an interventionalist in the universe they had designed to run on a set of rules instead.
There is an article on the BBC news website asking - Should Parents Ban Horrid Henry?, my response to this is... NO.
Horrid Henry is not actually horrid - pretty much as soon as you ask should you ban a book the answer is NO (even bad books that really shouldn't exist should not be banned they should be watered down with lots of other books and besides if you ban them you have just made it more likely that impressionable people will read them as they are now EXCITING, it's what I call the prohibition effect).
The stories have progressions where the kids fight and resolve differences and get around issues such as dyslexia and ADHD etc... and the insecurities that brings for kids etc... they are a positive thing. They also covered headlice and all the other little things that dominate a child's world, yes they contain toilet humour but lets face it 6-12 year olds tend to love that sort of stuff (regardless of gender), just pomp loudly in a room full of kids and you'll see what I mean!
Jean's read all the books and for Mary the Too Cool for School episode/film thingy was immensely important as a confidence builder. In the article the actors main issue was that his kid started kicking up after watching it - my take on that... kids go through phases. Jean started kicking after watching Ben 10 the animation - this was a time to teach that you can't just blanket copy what you see.
Also the books have the easy read high content thing going for them which is exactly what reluctant readers and those with things like dyslexia need. They need a story they can get their teeth into and in this case they will often identify heavily with the protagonist i.e. Henry but it is not so bulksome and wordy that they will feel they are grinding their way through them.
Yay so Horrid Henry is not actually horrid!
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 🙂
Books, Events and Outings, Poems, Sarah | sarah | 
Mon 25th Sep 2017 10:35 am | 
Comments (0) 
Subscribe