To say it has being a funny old year has
being a understatement considering at the start of the year Amanda (my good
lady) and I had a lot of creative plans for this year only for everything to change
at the end of March. Of course, I am talking about the out-break of Covid 19
and the way it has impacted on everybody in the creativity world.
In my case, it forced a change in direction
on quite a few projects, put some others on hold but review probably has
resulted in me having one of my busiest years:
Writing:
My fourth full length poetry book ‘The Streets we all we could see’ came out in March (https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B085VLG2VR/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i13) after several months of delays. (I was planning to release it originally in August last year but couldn’t quite get it right). As soon as I got that done, I was sent home from work (thankfully on full pay) and spent the first two or three months I guess finishing off the poetry chapbook ‘Selected extracts from the end of the world’, (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Selected-extracts-end-world-Andy/dp/B088BJV2BW/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=), a reissue of my first poetry book ‘Return to Kemptown’ which had reached its 10 year anniversary with lots of new and rare material (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Return-Kemptown-10th-year-anniversary/dp/B0882MFQRX/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=), and used the time to complete a few old projects, Games People Play and other nonsense poems (An collection of early poems offering a different side of my writing around the time of my debut collection ‘Return to Kemptown’) (https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08GG2DKVH/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i24), the second book in my poetic fantasy book ‘The Barbarians of the Wall’ entitled ‘Buried alive on the wall’ ) (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Buried-alive-wall-Barbarians-book/dp/B088BBKD2V/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=) and the fourth in my ongoing anti war poetry series ‘Europa’ – Europa IV – the long night goodbye (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Europa-IV-long-night-goodbye/dp/B08F6TXWV9/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Andy+N+Nick+Armbrister+Europa+IV&qid=1607858088&s=books&sr=1-1).
The magazine I help Amanda out with Printed Words closed its doors as a quarterly magazine with Issue 6 in June 2020, but Printed Words did a charity anthology for cancer charities called Words to Remember came out in September, both of which are still available on Amazon and all the usual places.
In April, I got offered the chance to write a
few columns for the arts magazine The Sunday Assembly and what began as a one
or two off turned into a weekly column currently as of typing containing 34 articles
(https://www.thesundaytribune.com/author/andy-npoet/)
and around the same time agreed to become a regular contributor to Alta Mabin’s
monthly Literature magazine ‘Poets Unlimited’ and over the year being published
in more publications than I can mention (thanks to all and they can be seen on
the publications page).
Readings:
My gigs page pretty well shows what I have being up to reading wise, but I am always reading somewhere online quite frequently, and have being featured on a few radio programmes, more than a few Zoom readings (Way of life now sadly for the moment) and being featured on a few video poetry programmes. Being a challenge, but I’ve really enjoyed it and look forward to more.
Throughout this, I have helped maintain Speak Easy, my monthly open mic Literature night with Steve and Amanda after we were forced to close it in person in March, initially owning to demand twice a month before scaling it back down in September to monthly as well as doing the I.T. for Write Out Loud Stockport and my own writing workshop with Amanda.
Music
Ocean in a Bottle has had quite a interesting year all in all as well as doing a number of self releases on its journey throughout Space has also appeared on the following:
Silber Media
The following single on it's January Droneuary series with a exclusive track 'Holding hands while watching Saturn'
April Fields series with the following singles:
1. 25 June 2018 Heaton Park
2. Bus outside playground at the end of a rainstorm
September stories series with the following singles:
1. Facing the Music
2. Letters to the future Part 1 and 2
Ambient Online Theme Compilations with tracks on Album 7,9,10,11, 12 and 13 of their online series.
Poiskah Do Do released one of my tracks on the album 'Shorty music V Poiskah DoDo & friends - May I be excused? (Part V)'
Two tracks on Slightly Off Kilters Records "Dulect Business News Two" (Space Dust and Asleep in Space being the tracks)
Xylem Records who released a two track album 'From Uranus to Neptune'
Off Records who have released two of my albums 'Re imaging the Solar System and 'Vocalising the Solar System'
Podcasts:
Perhaps the biggest expansion of the year was my activity on my Author / Poetry / Artist Podcast Spoken Label. At the start of the year, the Podcast was a low key success for me doing okay on Mixcloud and Bandcamp, but Amanda worked out how to get the Podcast onto Anchor in February which then expanded onto Itunes, Amazon, Spotify, Podbay, Podbean, Radio Public and thirteen other networks and has resulted in Spoken Label having a incredible year as of typing doing 96 sessions mostly because of lockdown where I just doing more and more sessions often 3 or 4 a week.
Reading in Bed, the book review Podcast series I do with Amanda kept going at its own steady pace and we have just celebrated our third anniversary with its 36th episode. I have also being helping Amanda out the digital editing with a weekly sub series under the Reading in Bed Umbrella called Reading in Bed Extracts where she read out extracts from other writers books.
Comics Unity, my comics news / tv / film related Podcast expanded officially at the start of the year into a three person Podcast when Amanda joined me and Michael for several episodes before lockdown struck. Over lockdown, me and Amanda carried on the Podcast as a two hander with tv reviews and I did a few comics reviews before Michael was able to join us again in July and August before we then went again into lockdown.
Koll, Andy, Amanda has carried on its steady pace of mostly recording bite sized mini episodes of 15 minutes each nearly every week, sometimes with a set thing we can discuss and other times maybe not. Lol
A New Podcast which started in the Spring on a roughly monthly basis (sometimes less, sometimes more) is Wrestle Up where I got approached by Dray Zera to do a wrestling Podcast on AEW and from the second episode, we were then joined by Dr Paul. This is contrast to all of the other Podcasts is recorded on live and uploaded just onto Youtube.
All in all, a busy year, look forward to next
year which I’ll talk about next.
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