Tag: iona jette

Social media for writers, ‘Orgasm Management’ etc

This is not the blog post I started writing this morning – but that turned into a cod philosophical/ psychological discourse that I eventually decided wasn’t going anywhere. So I’ve saved it for another day when I might be able to better whip my thoughts into a proper shape.

Instead, more of straightforward diary entry. This week I’ve been a bit restricted by a sore leg – I’ll spare you the details but just to say I managed to strain a calf muscle a couple of weeks ago and as a consequence I’ve been limping about and avoiding walking any sort of distances. It’s definitely getting better though.

On Thursday I made it into Brighton for the last of my ‘Build your social web presence’ sessions for New Writing South (next course starting September). It’s been really interesting to work with a group of writers on this. Clearly, publishers are putting pressure on authors to share the publicity load and demonstrate their social media reach and influence. I’ve wanting for a while to pull together my interests in social media/ communications and writing/publishing and this is one of the strands that seems to be coming to fruition. I’m also talking to a large children’s publisher at the moment about social media training, and am working with a literary agent to help support their authors in building their online presence.

There’s also a strong possibility of a book on this subject, before the end of the year – I’ll keep you posted.

Something else I’m working on is an up to date list of UK poetry magazines, print and online, together with details of their Twitter & Facebook etc. Although there are a number of lists around, including the excellent Poetry LIbrary list, I’ve found that their Twitter or Facebook accounts aren’t listed, or they’re not always kept up to date – magazines tend to come and go, and I’ve often wasted time by seeking out (and sometimes submitting to) magazines that have clearly gone under but not told anyone. Anyway, it’s a bit of a mammoth task – I’ll post the first draft when it’s ready and hope you can help me by telling me of any you know to be ‘dead’ or others that I’ve haven’t heard of that ought to be included. Then if I can keep it up to date it could be a useful reference.

And last but not least, on Friday I went to see my very funny performance post friend Iona Jette perform her new one-woman show The Orgasm Management Monologue in the Brighton Fringe. I filmed it on a DSLR camera, my first attempt at such a thing and great fun to play with all the gadgetry involved. I’ll post a link to it when it’s up!

Launches, celebrations, lovely poets

spring tree

Three days into May and I think it’s been sunny all week – that’s about 5 or 6 days on the trot, something we haven’t had in over a year, if not two. It’s not yet warm enough to take off my ‘winter’ boots (which I now wear nine months of the year.) What on earth has happened to the weather in this country? I am starting to feel seriously SAD.

However, a few joyful happenings: I had a lovely outing to Tonbridge on Wednesday with poet friend Jo to hear Abegail Morley read at the launch of her new collection, Eva and George, from Pindrop Press. It was presented alongside a series of evocative slides featuring the artwork of George Grosz and photos from between-the-wars Berlin, and a contextual commentary between poems. There followed the longest signing queue I’ve ever seen (except perhaps at Charleston), so kudos to Abegail. I have her first collection ‘How to pour madness into a teacup’ on order and look forward to reading it. (PS Abe very kindly featured one of my poems on her blog recently The Poetry Shed …)

On Sunday the Brighton Festival will have begun and I’m mooching over to Brighton to a Frogmore Papers anniversary reading where John McCullough and Maria Jastrzębska are two of the readers, really looking forward to that…

Tonight there’s another launch in Brighton, which I can’t get to, sadly – but the super Jess Richards is at Waterstones reading from her new book Cooking with Bones – it sounds like the event’s going to be big party.

Then next Friday 10th, my VERY funny performance poet friend Iona Jette is performing her new piece, ‘The Orgasm Management Monologue‘ at the Friends Meeting House (aren’t the Quakers wonderfully liberal?) and I think I’ll be filming it for her (if the bits of equipment I need arrive in time)  so I can’t laugh too hard because of risk of camera shake, or even falling over and knocking down the tripod.

On the poetry writing front, I’ve started a new ‘poem a day’ challenge which I began on May 1st, having written off my attempts in April. So let’s see where that leads – I feel like I haven’t written anything decent in weeks. But at least the sun is shining!