(also on The Unofficial Poetry Society website)
We like this. You don’t pay to enter. There’s no rules other than the closing date (which is fair enough) and a request for the project key words to be included but hey – really that’s up to you, isn’t it?
Poetry.
Imagine an art gallery where every canvas is the same size, every painting uses the same media, every image is monochrome.
Some may argue that it would be a fabulous art gallery to visit. You get to concentrate on the subject matter rather than be distracted by an artist’s individuality in the way he presents himself. Some may say that to create art with such constraints is a breach of the fundamentals of art. The artists themselves would most likely see it as an interesting exercise but refuse to conform to it being the norm.
Yet poets conform. Every ‘official’ representative body of the poetic world enforces strict rules on how poems should be presented to them. I presume this means that poems of other formats are not ‘proper’ poems.
I have just completed and published my second poetry collection along with another author’s, making a total number of fifteen books I have helped through to publication. Each one is unique. In some cases the author has illustrated, in others the author has asked for a settled spacing to create an additional question of the book as a whole, in one there is a blatant conglomeration of prose and poetry on the same page… and they are all magnificent.
The progression of poetry outside of the ‘established’ organisations, is an exciting transformation into a combined visual, audible, anarchical attack of the reader. And it’s thrilling. In my town, Brighton, poems are being posted in disused buildings, stickered on empty shops and every poetic rule is whipped into submission by the poet’s desire to just ‘get it out there’ because they also see the need to create a new audience and a new platform for their work.
I have no doubt that once these ‘rebel’ poets have achieved that audience, drowning out the table pounding of die-hards bleating on about meter, those same ‘official’ representatives will embrace the genre, say that it was all their idea anyway and then impose rules on how subsequent works should be presented in order to achieve recognition.
So I hereby declare the formation of the Unofficial Poetry Society. The only rule is that there are no rules. Sign up at any local lavatory wall. No subscription required.
Please join me! Live performance, both to tracks and live musicians, plus the usual banter and bluster.
So, I’ve finally reached the finishing line. I set out to make this book so much more than the last – both with quantity and personalised touches – and I became quite determined not to cut any corners… to the point where I drove myself quite dotty editing, proofreading and redrawing illustrations that I wasn’t 100% happy with.
Much of it was written in Coffee Republic (they make a wonderful cappuccino) and they always cheered me up when I was flagging, so I was THRILLED when they offered me the upstairs to launch the book. It’ll be like home away from home. Honestly, I spend so much time there that even the Google Earth car captured me sitting by the window with my notepad and mug! I just need some people there to help me send the book on its way… please come!
If not, I shall see you at the Festival with my mini-amp and my bowler hat.
(Details of how to purchase the book online, very soon)
Kiersty x
All done. The proof copies are apparently winging their way over my way right now and I am completely anticipatious and trembley-like. Watch this space. Keep everything crossed. Despite last-minute hiccups of having to reset all the illustrations, reconfigure the Table of Contents and finding (gasp!) an ‘it’s’ that should have been ‘its’ in the last 24 hours before it went to print, I’m still pretty much bang on schedule. I’m hoping it’s going to be the best one yet. Watch out for much whooping and over excitement before the end of the week!
I’ve been busy getting stock together for the Brighton Festival (have booked my first tickets, too!) and so far, this is one of my favourite postcards. It’s amazing how different fonts and backgrounds change the whole mood of the poem.
If you don’t already know… I give them away during the festival as part of the ‘spread some poetry around’ and now there are 16 in the postcard series! The nicest thing is when someone sends one back to me, haha… but just to know they get sent around is lovely.
The nicest one so far, do you agree?
I am very pleased to have been asked to perform at the VOCAL EXPRESSIONS gig in Jubilee Square on May 1st, 2010.
I will be kicking the show off with Tiddly Om and Brighton(at 1pm). There will be lots of local authors, poets and lyricists performing, with this old bird taking to the stage again at 3.20pm to do a ten minute set to music.
The whole gig is free! and it is in aid of Breast Cancer Research, sponsored by Brighton and Hove Council.
I will be selling my new CD and books, as well as giving away some of the postcards that I’ve been busy, busy creating.
Please come along and support these local artists! We have a lot of interlopers on our stages at the Festival and it would be good to show a good turnout for Brighton’s home-grown.
See you there!
It was with a heavy heart that I picked up the Brighton Festival catalogue yesterday. Everything was confirmed. Our town’s biggest event is a rip off – not just the main festival but the Fringe too. So I declare the launch of
All Brighton performers who think they can put on a show without ripping off the public or lining pockets of promoters – let’s reclaim the beach, contact the open art houses and see if they want to provide a venue, talk to pub landlords and bribe coffee shop owners OR just busk, busk, busk on every street corner.
Let’s give the people of BRIGHTON a taste of what they know about Art, Literature, Music and Poetry, which they experience all year round in our city - it is all around us and it doesn’t need to be prebooked or pompously dressed up in glossy brochures or require a second job to pay for it
AND THAT THE PEOPLE OF BRIGHTON ARE DOING IT FOR THEMSELVES.
I am fed up with the hijack of our festival. It will eat itself and then what do we do? Time to get back to our roots.
Tiger, Tiger, burning bright
In the casinos of the night,
What wandering hand or flirting eye
Could frame thy pitiful symmetry?
Your self-flagellation on national TV,
Rehearsed, resounding, nauseating
Bile of how Buddha will forgive
What your wife and kids must live.
Your arrogance a tad under par,
a long iron whacked for a putt,
whilst the columnists babble pun
after pun, it will never be said and done.
A hole in one!
They’ll shout with a chuckle,
I bet he’s done that before
In the bed, the kitchen, the bathroom floor…
He’s lost in the rough!
With the European beauty,
The razor redundant
For the present incumbent.
A fine stroke indeed (but he is well practised)!
He’s scored a birdie (not for the first time, we’re told)!
That drive just missed the tree (the fire brigade can go save a life)!
He’s over clubbing (by orders of his publicist, the public… and his wife)!
But Tiger please remember,
Your apology was as ill-conceived
As your original misdemeanour,
For your exaggerated humility is equally flawed
Because you really,
truly,
honestly,
believe we care?
Or was it merely to placate
Your sponsors, your pimps,
Gillette and Nike, who threatened your
Wallet, unless you spoke nicely.
Shame on you for your stage managed apology,
You really should have just shown some balls.
.
