Friday, 25 January 2019
Friday, 21 December 2018
The true meaning of Christmas (Seasonal new poem)
Haunted in the half sunken darkness
Some Christmases you don’t know
What to say to each other
Apart from simply walking to your family.
Smiling at couples walking around
Frozen ponds with their dogs
And children making snowmen
Out of the white mysteries on the floor
Moments tied up in images
Outside other people’s houses
With lights on their windows
Like lifted eyes facing the light
Crossing squares in squinted emotion
In full accord with the earth
Snorting at flurries as they come down
With a flick on each other’s noses
And a smile that says more than words
All the way to when your sister
Opens her front door
With a glass of wine in her hand.
Friday, 16 November 2018
Podcast Catch Up..
Have been a bit busy recently Podcasting and not been blogging them here..
Here is what I have been Podcasting over the past few months:
Spoken Label:
(Zoë Sîobhan Howarth-Lowe –September
2018)
https://spokenlabel.bandcamp.com/album/jason-a-meuschke-spoken-label-september-2018
(Jason A Meuschke –September 2018)
https://spokenlabel.bandcamp.com/album/paul-jenkins-spoken-label-september-2018
(Paul Jenkins – September 2018)
https://spokenlabel.bandcamp.com/album/michael-john-hulley-ii-spoken-label-august-2018
(Michael John Hulley – August 2018)
https://spokenlabel.bandcamp.com/album/melissa-walters-my-carousel-curse-ep
(Melissa Walters - My Carousel Curse EP)
https://spokenlabel.bandcamp.com/album/kealan-coady-spoken-label-july-2018
(Kealan Coady – Spoken Label – July 2018)
https://spokenlabel.bandcamp.com/album/julia-davenport-spoken-label-july-2018
(Julia Davenport – Spoken Label – July 2018)
Here is what I have been Podcasting over the past few months:
Spoken Label:
(Mel Woodend – November 2018)
(Kristina M
Serrano – November 2018)
(Freengreenwanderer
aka Roehn – November 2018)
(Helen Kay – October 2018)
(Rosa Wright – October 2018)
(Brian John Mitchell – October 2018)
(The Nearly Dead Poets
Association – October 2018)
(Gordon Zola –
October 2018)
(Andy N and Amanda
Steel – Bolton Diggers Festival July 2018)
(The Nearly Dead Poets
Association, Bolton Diggers Festival, August 2018)
(Ken D Williams –
Alive and kicking)
(Simon Widdop – Bolton
Diggers Festival, July 2018)
(Zoë Sîobhan Howarth-Lowe –September
2018)
https://spokenlabel.bandcamp.com/album/jason-a-meuschke-spoken-label-september-2018
(Jason A Meuschke –September 2018)
https://spokenlabel.bandcamp.com/album/paul-jenkins-spoken-label-september-2018
(Paul Jenkins – September 2018)
https://spokenlabel.bandcamp.com/album/michael-john-hulley-ii-spoken-label-august-2018
(Michael John Hulley – August 2018)
https://spokenlabel.bandcamp.com/album/melissa-walters-my-carousel-curse-ep
(Melissa Walters - My Carousel Curse EP)
https://spokenlabel.bandcamp.com/album/kealan-coady-spoken-label-july-2018
(Kealan Coady – Spoken Label – July 2018)
https://spokenlabel.bandcamp.com/album/julia-davenport-spoken-label-july-2018
(Julia Davenport – Spoken Label – July 2018)
Reading in Bed
(October 2018)
(September 2018)
(August 2018)
Comics Unity
(Episode 1. 5 - Pilot 2 - November 2018)
(Episode 2 - November 2018)
Sunday, 4 November 2018
DIH and friends 2018 Submission call
Back again for its 17th anniversary(Barring a few gaps off course), DIH and friends at Christmas are now after experimental, ambient, songs (on any topic), poetry and music tracks on the theme of Christmas.
Back
now in it’s 17th year, as can be seen on
www.digitalvomit.com/dih-and-friends, DIH and friends have since 2002
been producing an annual series of anti Christmas songs for people
who really don’t like Christmas or have a very alternative
viewpoint of the season in question.
The
history of the project from Digital Vomit state ‘The origin behind
the infamous series of DIH with friends at Christmas began back in
2002 when for a one off joke as a side project from his more official
work in DIH, Andy N one year decided with the help of one or two
friends decided to do in his words ‘ A Christmas album for those
people who don’t really like Christmas’ where in the space of
half an hour (as was the original plan) – Andy and a few friends
would murder, cripple and take the piss out of as many songs as they
could.
However,
as is the nature of the beast with this sort of thing things
snowballed and by the time the second album came along, It had become
officially a DIH project where they would between the three of them
alongside with an ever-increasing cast play around with the myth of
the Christmas, which will often be funny and sad sometimes within the
same breath.
The
music contained within this series of albums are varied and can vary
from spoken word (sometimes with musical backing or experimental
backing), acoustic singer songwriter stuff to music that could appeal
to fans of Aphex Twin, hardcore, breakbeats, dub step, fans of the
spoken word, re-imagining of carols and classic songs, faithful
versions of Christmas carols and songs and generally people who like
their music to challenge and make them think.
For
reasons too long winded and boring to go into here, DIH took a break
from the Christmas albums in 2012 before starting up again in 2015.
Following
on from their 2015 comeback, we are now expecting submissions for our
2018 album, our fourth album since starting up again with anything
and everything encouraged from experimental, drones, ambient,
Christmas Carols, Poems, songs.. whatever takes your guardian
really..
Anything
is welcome by email to either myself aen1mpo@yahoo.co.uk. (Andy N)
Me
and Keith can also be contacted viva Facebook for further questions
The
complete archive can be sampled here
- http://www.digitalvomit.com/dih-and-friends
and the album will be released on Hicc Records
on bandcamp.com
Closing
date is 12th
December 2018.
Sunday, 30 September 2018
Watershed as a writer (2008).. (Part 3 of my Non Fiction adventures as a writer)
Following from my previous
two guest blogs at firstly Katy aka The Rebel Poetess (https://therebelpoetess.blogspot.com/2018/09/guest-post-andy-n-podcast.html)
and Amanda Steel’s excellent blog as a follow up (https://amandasteelwriter.wordpress.com/2018/09/14/guest-post-andy-n/)
2008 was a watershed year for me certainly after I left the first major writing
workshop I was in and ended up forming eventually a different writing workshop
/ discussion with two other former members of same group.
I am slowly working on my
autobiography / auto non fiction or auto fiction (according to Amanda) ("Losing
the thread)” that will cover the incident in more details but the difference in
changing groups was remarkable at that time in my writing career. That same
previous writing group I don’t know when it formed, but it likely formed
somewhere at the end of 2004 maybe earlier and I came aware of it after joining
a short term writing group at a certain local University (where I studied
previously from 1998 to 2001).
After that course folded,
one of the people who were there who for the sake of this blog I’ll call Cathy
(not her real name) got a few of us to go down to her group which she ran at a
local community centre. Almost right from the start, it was apparent that the
group was very loosely ran with the advertised start time rarely starting at
the advertised time of 7pm sometimes 7.10pm and then later on over time and
sometimes over-running past 9pm which over time narked the people who ran the
centre.
I’ll talk about the collapse
of that group at a later post like I said, as it’s a separate story that will
need explaining in major detail of simply how you don’t run a writing group.
The group I set up with two ex colleagues from the ashes of it when it
collapsed is worth understanding got me going with my writing and I ended up
writing over the first three months of entering this new group three times the
amount of work I had wrote in the last 18 months of my previous group and
entered the live circuit in excitement because of it.
The thing I learnt from this
change was one major thing. Happiness. Yeah, happiness in the sense when it
became apparent to the three of us that the group we were in simply was holding
us back from what we all wanted to it, and in my case enabled to literally got
for it and resulted in my first poetry book ‘Return to Kemptown' following at
the start of 2010.
It's certainly possible if I
had stayed in that group, ‘Return to Kemptown’ wouldn’t have happened and any
of my books that came next after that. That first group we were all in went
stale because of bad running very quickly (see above). I’ve been going to other
groups since, including one which I’ve been going to fairly regularly since the
end of 2010 but that group has been evolving constantly into different
territories with some of our work appearing in art exhibitions and across art
trails all over the North West of England.
Writing I am a firm believer
is a process that is constantly developing and needs to be nurtured as such. Of
course, the bulk of it is written alone but going to good groups I think is an
important process of learning what your writing strengths lays and can only
help you develop and develop as a writer. Going to good groups I learnt
encourages you to try out different approaches and write things that perhaps
otherwise you wouldn’t have attempted to try.
A bad group. Well, I’ll let
you work the effect for yourself…
Sunday, 23 September 2018
Travelling photographs from Late Summer / Early Autumn
A few people like me who travel to work would
have encountered the problems up and down Regent Road and the covering ring
roads recently. This has resulted in me leaving really, really early for work
and during the travelling resulted in the pictures below that perhaps I wouldn't
have normally seen.
Saturday, 15 September 2018
latest news etc
Long story short, I got approached to write some non-fiction
recently from my friend Katy aka The Rebel Poetess which can be read here - https://therebelpoetess.blogspot.com/2018/09/guest-post-andy-n-podcast.html
Since then, my lovely partner, Amanda Steel then
approached me with questions about said article which has resulted in a follow up
piece being blogged not long after here..
I’ll be writing a additional blog here next, and will then
be looking at additional follow up blogs for this too (as this will be a series
of blogs containing some stories which will appear in my autobiography ‘Losing
the Plot’ which will be finished in the next year in much more detail.
Spoken Label is still really, really active
with podcasts recently-ish with the last six podcasts or so being released
(There are loads more forthcoming):
Zoë Sîobhan Howarth-Lowe (https://spokenlabel.bandcamp.com/album/zo-s-obhan-howarth-lowe-spoken-label-september-2018)
Jason A Meuschke (https://spokenlabel.bandcamp.com/album/jason-a-meuschke-spoken-label-september-2018)
Paul Jenkins
(https://spokenlabel.bandcamp.com/album/michael-john-hulley-ii-spoken-label-august-2018)
Michael John
Hulley II
(https://spokenlabel.bandcamp.com/album/michael-john-hulley-ii-spoken-label-august-2018)
Melissa Walters
(https://spokenlabel.bandcamp.com/album/melissa-walters-my-carousel-curse-ep)
Kealan Coady
(https://spokenlabel.bandcamp.com/album/kealan-coady-spoken-label-july-2018)
Reading in Bed, My joint Literature review podcast with the
always lovely Amanda Steel has also been maintaining a monthly schedule of
Podcasting, the podcasts for August and September can be seen as below..
https://readinginbed.bandcamp.com/album/reading-in-bed-9-september-2018
https://readinginbed.bandcamp.com/album/reading-in-bed-8-august-2018
Ocean in a Bottle has also been steadily releasing singles and
Eps (with other releases pending for elsewhere in the new year - more details
to follow) the last three releases are:
https://oceaninabottle.bandcamp.com/album/synth-dreams (Synth Dreams)
https://oceaninabottle.bandcamp.com/album/movement-in-the-wind (Movement in the Wind)
https://oceaninabottle.bandcamp.com/album/stepping-into-the-sea (Staring into the sea)
Poetry
wise, apart from the release of The Birth of Autumn which I am delighted with,
me and Amanda have done a number of gigs from a excellent support to Julia
Davenport’s book launch and Bolton Diggers Festival too, I have had three poems
appear (Twice as Hard, Missing the Point and Held Back) all appear in Helen Kay’s
touring Dyslexia Exhibition (worth seeing), two poems (Re-creating the Railway
Children and last train from New Mills Central) at the New Mills Poetry Arts
trail (Pictures to follow) which are on display until 30 September 2018.
More
to follow also including details of guest posts from writers regarding writing.
All
go
Watch this space (:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)