At least they didn't ask what 'piss' means...

Selected vocabulary that drew a blank with my non-English audience at the poetry reading/discussion yesterday:
'flailing', 'polished off', 'neat', 'thumbprint', 'chopped', 'haiku'...

But considering the language barrier, they were attentive, perceptive and engaged. And I feel much more confident talking in front of a group these days. I guess when you've - somehow - ended up leading a whole parent-toddler group in renditions of Ring-a-Ring-a-Roses, Hickory Dickory Dock, and Five Currant Buns, chatting about poetry to a few Catalan teachers holds no fear.

Nobody told me I'd be playing drums as well...

A photo from the fun (and gratifyingly well-attended considering the weather) event at Pelham House yesterday:

Lewes Live Literature festival event

I have another reading - probably the last for a while - coming up: Sunday 28th October, 1.15pm @ Pelham House, Lewes.

The morning after the night before

Well, I survived - and even enjoyed - last night's reading. And here's a photo, taken by my friend Alexandra, to prove it:

Tonight

Tonight I am reading at the Komedia in Brighton. I still haven't produced any new poems. I have a cold (which I fondly imagine might make me sound gruff and sexy but in reality probably juthd bake be sound like dith). And my snotty, stuffed up head is full of boring house moving stuff. So it doesn't bode well.

Time poor

I was obviously being facetious about publishing a novel before I'm 30, but the way things are going at the moment I'll be lucky to finish the damn thing before I'm 300... it's not for lack of ideas, or even motivation (for a change), it's the sheer impossibility of finding any TIME. Sometimes I write on the train on the way to work, but the actual process of putting the words on paper is frustratingly slow compared to the completed lines, paragraphs, chapters that already exist in my head. Then I usually use Alice's nap times to transfer the resulting garbled notes onto the laptop and edit them, but these are unpredictable snatched moments at best. Especially when you subtract the time it takes me to do the household chores that prove impossible to tackle when Alice is awake. How do other people manage?

Meanwhile, I have three poetry gigs booked in September and October, which is great but also worrying, because I haven't written any new poems for months. And I don't think a performance based on fragments of a barely started crime novel will be an acceptable substitute, somehow...

National Poetry Day

Happy National Poetry Day!

Every year this day seems to receive less and less publicity, sadly, or maybe it's just because every year I've moved further and further away from the circles where anyone gives a damn (compared to say, 1999 when I was actually working for the Poetry Society on NPD where it was obviously experienced as the most important occasion of the year).

This year's theme is 'identity'. Something I am still thinking about a lot as I get closer and closer to adding a new label to my patchwork self: mother.

Weeks: 28+2