What I am up to week commencing - 13/12/2010

With Christmas time now sneaking nearer and nearer, usually it starts to quieten off a lot a lot of the creative events I go to, and this is the last proper active week I expect to go to for the rest of this year.

Monday last night I attended Write Out Loud at Stockport Art Gallery. For me this is an important night for me to try to go to every month if I have new material ready as I’ll use it as a sounding board for new pieces to see how a low key audience takes to them.

On this night, I debuted two brand new poems which have come alive over the past few days namely ‘Percy’ which is about one of my father’s older half brothers who was killed in action in the Second World War who I never met.

This poem came about after attending ‘Pass on a Poem’ last week where a lady called Jeannette Slavinski announced she was after poems for a forthcoming charity poetry book about Heroes. I’d always wanted to write a poem about Percy and after some research with my father, the piece came together quite quickly, and will be submitted later on this week.

Second piece was a piece that needed somewhat more research as somebody suggested to me recently to write a poem about Hulme because of it’s very different looking area nowadays. Now although I had been travelling through the area of Hulme (which is on the outskirts of the centre of Manchester) for well over 20 years, I didn’t know tons about it, and the poem I wrote used people’s memories with my own experiences.

Both pieces thankfully went down really well and I am hoping the Hulme piece will lead to a possible reading in the New Year.

Otherwise, this week, besides work – pretty well creative wise (No band rehearsals as guitarist is ill) all I will be doing is  getting ready for a reading in Ashton on Sunday which will be my last reading this year for a event called 7  stages of Well Being. Cathy got me a reading here in September for their first event and I enjoyed it that much, I have agreed to go back again and this time it will be a full set (possibly) of

Winter / Christmas poems.

Need to double-check the time it is all starting, but I think it’s a 5pm start at the Station Pub in Ashton and it’s free to get in. 

Highlight of the week however will have to be going one of my idols a mysteries Manchester based trio ‘The Orch.’ play a very, very  rare concert indeed on Friday 17^th December 2010. 

I first became of this spoken word led musical trio around 1993 I seem to recall when they cheekily released a demo tape called ‘ Greatest Hits’ which contained 8 tracks of harsh realism spoken over the top of guitars and keyboards which simply was unlike

anything else I had ever heard. The band themselves did a 7 inch single called ‘Flat Life’ the year after, and appeared on the first Factory Records 2 sampler in 1995 (and were by far the best thing on it) before splitting the year after with a heartbreaking single called ‘Little Rockets’.

All three members were involved in other projects over the years, but it was still a surprise when they specially reformed to do a short set for a Hovis Presley (who was a comedy Manchester Poet who died I think back in 1995) memorial night in 1996

At the Green Room in the centre of Manchester which was a  mad, mad night, (where not quite everything went to plan but still was great fun) and then followed it up with another gig in Darwin (just outside Bolton) nearly two years after that which was top fun (despite the fact I was really ill) and I didn’t really like the area shall we say.

This one is on at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester which I am hoping will be a top notch night and should be finished around about a good time for me to leave the work’s Christmas do which will be around 8pm.