News at the Slippy Pole & The next poem for shops

Amidst all the excitement of "International put your poem in a shop month" you'd be forgiven for thinking I'd be forgiven for forgetting about the most forgotten pole in Ireland, but no - the very latest from the slippy pole, last seen on this blog here and before that here, here, here,
and first spotted here...
Well here it is today - the slippery warning sign is still clinging on for dear life - at this rate it should still be there when the road is actually slippery again and needs a new sign to go up, but instead of spending the country's hard earned money on a new sign the clever council people will point to their great conservational genius and hoist the old sign proudly on the pole. I will, of course, let you know if there are any further developments.

In other news, so invigorated by the immense success of my first poem placement in a shop I have already written the next one. This time to go into a make up counter or gifty chemist type environment. Here it is

Go

Frenzied gift hunt, seek bright shiny crap
Dazed mirror eye contact, you shed glitter like snow
No box-set, cream/ face paint, unguent or slap
Makes you younger or sexier or fitter than now

Poem testing will commence over the weekend...

This just in - new poems spotted in colourful looking shops in titus land - click here for more.

International Put your Poem in a Shop Month - Launch

Last night was the official launch party for

"International put your Poem in a Shop Month"

with the official first placement of a poem in a shop. Predictably, I hung around the shadows a bit first - not the band - feeling guilty and as if I was about to litter, although really I was just about to give a gift to society, the gift of a poem.

A few glasses of wine and an inspiring play by Abbey Callen called Strandline later, I was ready to do whatever it took for my art and boldly strode into a shop (that I never ever go to), under cover of three fellow writers, made straight for the milk area and placed my poem, got a picture of it quick before anyone could stop me. There were too big security people on the door, and since no one else wanted to buy anything I ended up buying a bottle of a cherry flavoured drink, just in case the burly security men stopped us on the way out and went "Hey you! Did you just leave a poem in the shop?" So, all suspicions dispersed we all merrily went on our way. I just think that maybe next time I'll write a poem about some kind of shop where browsing is ok without buying. After all this is supposed to be some kind of non commercially artistic endeavour and if I just keep buying things every time I put a poem in a shop, that'll just be good for shops.... Ah the problems of a struggling gorilla artist.

LOOKIE HERE For the first poem in a shop outside of this blog!! Well done Oubliette!

Too Many DJs

Not content with bursting onto the blogworld, Mr VC hosted his first radio show yesterday evening on Radió na Life.

You can catch it here.

We are the new posh and becks, or bert and ernie, or bonnie and clyde, or salt and pepper, or sonny and cher, or something

Thanks too for the overwhelming response to the "International put your poem in a shop" campaign, kicking off in a shop near you soon. I have a quiet kind of feeling, I don't want to say it, but it seems like it's going to be even more of a (miserable failure) roaring success than last year - more of last years escapades can be seen here.
The in-home poem test on this week's poem has gone very well and we are ready for full upscaling to launch.

Poems in Shops - an example

So to kick off

"International put your poem in a shop month"

here follows an example of the type of thing we might be looking for:

Foil tops crow pecked in history
Remember friendly face who delivered
Now milk agrows in cartons, plastic shapes,
Fresh dairy cows watch and shiver

And that one would go.... yes you've guessed it (my clever blogeens)... next to the milk etcetera etcetera.

The beauty of placing a poem in a shop in this way is of course that you get to put it where you want, when you want, and with no pesky editors deciding it's not good enough (those astute poetry judges among you will have noticed that the standard in the above is certainly far from prohibitively high) - the biggest difficulty I suppose is going to be the placing and the proof.
Picking up things off shelves in shops is easy, we do it all the time, but putting something there, and taking a photo of it? That could be a bit more difficult. If you want - you could follow last years template of putting up a sign in the ads section of your store, example to be seen here.
Good luck poetry gorillas, I'll be putting my first shop poem up somewhere sometime soon, so keep an eye out next time you pop out for milk, and do let me know how you get on yourself, any tips for how to secretly place a poem would be welcome.

Here's the above poem undergoing rigorous poem testing on my domestic test kitchen replica of a real litre of milk.


(By the way - do have a look at Honey Fungus' chicken poems over on their blog...)

Another Monday Poem in preparation for International put your poem in a shop month

Yes it's that time of year again - the three weeks or so that I loosely call a month, and urge all great poetry writers out there to get their poems into shops, for

"INTERNATIONAL PUT YOUR POEM IN A SHOP MONTH"

replacing capitalism and consumerism with art. It's inspired by the ShoP magazine, but involves you physically going out there and placing a short poem in a shop and taking a picture of it there. The noticeboard was the target of choice last year, but this year I think we should open it up and put the poem anywhere in the shop - afterall people don't just stare at notice boards...

Write a short poem - no more than 4 lines - decide if it goes with the fruit, the frozen food, the cleaning products, or maybe you're in a different kind of shop altogether. Place the poem, and get a pic, let me know about it and we'll do a grand list of all the links at the end of the "month". Poetry to the people!!

Have fun. Here's how last year's poems in shops month was kicked off.

Back to Words

Do words slow down the mind? Thinking Shhhhhh shhhhhhhhhhhhhh shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh & keeping words out of your head might seem like a pointless exercise, but it is interesting to see how hard it is. Please try this - look at the following gap for a minimum of one minute and see if you can stop any words from passing through your head while you do it.































go on do it - set the alarm now and do it - don't just scroll down to the next bit

































For you impatient ones - your loss, shame on you, you're as bad as thierry, but it's only yourself you're cheating, for those who tried it, how did ye get on? Dorothea Brande believed being able to empty your head of words like that is the key to allowing your subconscious break through with more creative and clever ideas than your conscious mind would ever be capable of. This was her big secret of success for writers in her excellent book, Becoming a Writer, and it explains the phenomenon of how some of the best thinking is done without words, how an idea for a brilliant story surfaces after a night's sleep or a long period of non-thinking - ie some writer's swear by scrubbing floors, or organising files, some kind of thoughtless exercise which puts them into a trance-like state - this can then lead to better thinking at a deeper level. And where are we without this? We can't physically go one whole 24 hours without sleep (and thus allowing the subconscious a decent gap in our chattery wordy thoughts to do it's work) without noticing a huge impact on our own well being. (Longer periods of sleeplessness can even lead to psychosis, in one extreme example New York radio DJ Peter Tripp went 201 hours without sleep and suffered serious delusions and eventually a total personality change as a consequence. - but the function of sleep is perhaps a subject for another time)
So maybe let your subconscious do its job from time to time, get your mind away from the world of words, see what difference it makes to the way you think, feel or write...

Blathnaid Nolan on the Radio

My guest on the radio this week is the talented Blathnaid Nolan, a recent addition to Lucan Writer's group. Blathnaid grew up in South Dublin where she currently lives with her husband and two children. While always scribbling throughout her adult life – diary entries, letters, bad poetry, it was eight years ago that she decided to take it more seriously and started writing short stories. She is currently attempting a novel set in the 1950’s. Her main interests are character, emotions and the everyday dramas that we all experience. Last year she was published in Dermot Bolger’s critically acclaimed anthology “Night and Day”.

She has chosen the ever interesting theme of

Unrequited Love,

and will be sharing two of her brilliant short stories with us. Do tune in - 11 am Sunday morning... Liffey Sound - link over on the right there somewhere...

That's uploaded now onto the radio blog - link on the right as well... hope you enjoy. Another link worth looking at is Honey Fungus' latest entry - the teen writing group have posted up 2 of their brilliant poems on the ever intrigueing poetic theme of chickens.

Laughs and Shivers and 7 Towers

Poetry is definitely getting more popular and trendy, as comedy was in the 90's, poetry open mics seem to be opening every other day - am thinking of starting one myself, maybe in my house, Niamh's Salon de Póit's, or some such, but that's a story for another time.

On Wednesday night however I ventured into town alone to visit, for the first time, one of the older, more established nights in the city, that being the 7 Towers last Wednesday series, I'd been trying to check it out for ages, and just hadn't made it until now. Like the Glór sessions it's another downstairs kind of place, you feel hidden away in the depths of the pub, with fanciful gossamer drapings behind the stage and red glass chandeliers.

It starts early, 7.30, which is nice, because it then finishes early 10.45, great for those of us who are unable for the late late nights, (except on fridays when the late late makes it acceptable). As I say it's a well established night, run by the folks at 7 towers publications since long before it was cool. There is a great mix at it of young and old, so it feels like a more multigenerational thing than anything I've been at before, and there was a really impressive range of talent on display, about 12 readers, at about 7 minutes each.

The highlights? Steven Conway had a lovely story called Shrodinger's bus, there was a poem about an earthworm surfacing on the M50, Anamaria Crowe Serrano gave us some breath taking poems, literally - catch your breath kinda stuff, there was Andrej - a regular from the Glór nights who blew the crowd away with a cover of a great poem about Tommy Cooper's death, and his own poem was pretty amazing too. Ross Hattaway, Oran Ryan, and Eamon Linskey too made for really very enjoyable and thought provoking listening. A few other really striking readers whose names I didn't catch also gave us a few good laughs and shivers.
I liked the feeling of experimentation there as well, one lady read a poem she had written that very day, it felt very fresh from that point of view, felt like the work was all new to that environment, no reading the same old same old... a challenging thing but also very exciting.

All this, and a good sized crowd at it on a night when we were spoiled for choice with another new open mic The Brown Bread Mix Tape happening at the Stag's head (which I'm reliably informed was also brilliant and which I'll have to try and get to next), and lots of other literary happenings/ launches etc in the city. SPOILED we are.

(Speaking of spoiling if you've read this far I might as well tell you it's Mr VC's Birthday today, he started a blog yesterday - An Flíp - feel free to go over and wish him a happy day, but you don't have to)

Odd one out results - Elementary my dear Watson -

As TFE brilliantly deduced - (see my comments page frm 2 days back) - no 4 was the fib. Indeed I didn't dream of creepy parrots as a child, sure parrots are lovely things, and anyway - you don't dream in colour.

1. I recieved a letter from George Bush Snr - It was a response to my request for an interview for my newspaper, which I ran weekly or whenever I felt like it at the time, 20p per copy for an A4 page back and front. He declined my request - obviously knew of my brilliant and probing interview skills even then.

2. I was a backing dancer in a Bollywood film - very far back, very very far back, a short film, filmed in dubland earlier this year.

4. I was offered a job on the Statue of Liberty and declined. This was for the J1, a job in the gift shop, minimum wage, in a city where rent would've been astronomical, you basically would have had to be able to pay for the priviledge - and I wasn't.

5. I had a job breeding fruit flies - this was in a lab in Germany, as part of my college course, I had to feed them. I was useless at getting them to stay where they should stay though, so we used to have little clouds of them around the place.

6. I had a job making cardboard boxes - summer and weekend job during college, one of those things where you never wondered how they were produced until you end up working at the factory where they're made, like the magic door in Bosco.

7. I was nicknamed Sid Vicious as a child. This followed several wrestling matches with my brother and Dad - probably when I was about 5 or 6, both of whom emerged from the fight defeated, with tiny but deep bite marks.

8. I attended the Eurovision song contest - girly holiday with my mam the year Lordi triumphed in Athens. I'd heartily recommend it as a holiday choice. Fantastic hype, great caberet tack and brilliance. And you'll be a mini celebrity for a while afterwards.

9. I was a member of the "Caring and Sharing Association" in my teens, a great fun organisation to be part of, organising social events for people with disabilities - despite the corny name it was one of the best things I ever did.

10. I had a note for a fictional verruca for several years worth of PE - this is true, my mother collaborated and rewrote it for me whenever it got old looking. At the end of one of the terms the PE teacher wrote "Hope the verruca clears up for next year" on my report card.

The Wind and the Willies

You hardly ever see a leaf actually being plucked from the branch by the wind, like the way you hardly ever see a bird die but you know it must happen, (unless they're all immortal apart from the ones that end up squoooshed on the road) today the air is alive with the leaves, watch almost any tree for a few seconds and you'll see it reluctantly parting with one more of it's food providers in this wilderness that became suburbia (a fact that no one has yet told to the wind). There is a child's buggy stuck up a tree on the balgaddy road too, unless it grew there, like the one that's growing just on the green off the coldcut road. This morning it was shaking threateningly in the wind, and made me worry a little more than normal about what will happen when the bough breaks, it might happen harmlessly at night, because the worst weather always happens at night, when darkness gives permission to the elements to do what they like, unwatched by anyone. I still felt a stirring of something communityish, unselfish, to do something to prevent someone (who happened not to be looking up as they walked along, day or night) from getting squooshed. So I rang the gardaí, but think maybe you should too, because much as the man at the other end of the line sounded like he was taking it seriously and assured me they would look into it in a few minutes time, I think I'd have hung up and laughed a bit, and maybe muttered something about catching real criminals.
In other news - the new version of Word is giving me the Willies - everytime I try to type the word wellies - it mischieveously changes it to willies, automatically, creepy eh (In ireland some of us say something gives us the willies when we find it a bit scary - for my millions of international readers)
On the odd one out quiz of yesterday, no one has yet guessed correctly, so keep those guesses coming, and I thought ye knew me!