Tooling Up - #napowrimo, #saboteur17, and stuff

It’s been a long few months, but, with the sunshine and all of that stuff, I finally feel like I’m turning a corner.

My health is (slowly - so slowly) improving, and my voice appears to be returning to something like its original mellifluousness. This will be a relief to everyone, I’m sure (though most of all for the people who’ve had to listen to me squeak and grate and despair about laryngitis as the days turned into weeks turned into months).

The opportunity for Something Exciting turned up recently. I won’t know for two months whether I’ve been successful, but it’s been an amazing opportunity to review what I’ve done with poetry and other artforms and poets and other artists over the last few years, and it turns out that it’s a great deal, and some of it brilliant. So I now have a nice, portable poetry CV to hand and plenty of buzzphrases about my “practice” to recycle for other opportunities.

In the meantime, NaPoWriMo approacheth, and I’m feeling pretty confident about it this time. Since I lost all momentum on getting The Selkie any further after Edinburgh (did I mention I lost my voice - I feel sure I must have done...), I’ve decided to deliberately give it (and my vocal chords) a further rest before trotting it out to other places next year. Since I spent an enormous quantity of energy on The Selkie last year, my NaPoWriMo efforts definitely suffered. You can follow what I post publicly here.

In the meantime, though, if you liked it, you can nominate it for a Saboteur Award and frankly I would just explode with excitement if it made the shortlist (let alone won), so if seeing a grown woman run around and around her kitchen/ garden (depending on weather) like a hyperactive five-year-old is your idea of a reward, I will totally film that if I get shortlisted. Get clicking.

For other entries, you should also consider nominating Allographic Open Mic/ Hammer & Tongue Cambridge for best regular show, Haiku To F*ck To (Spark The Words)/ In Other Words Anthology 2016 for best anthology, Poetry & Piano (Matt Widgery accompanying Nikki Marrone, Uppahar Ups Subba, and Tim Knight) for best collaboration, Bunbury Magazine/ The Fenland Reed for best magazine, SHINPRINT (publishing arm of SHINDIG) for most innovative publisher, Knots & Branches (Stewart Carswell)/ Years Ago You Coloured Me (J.S.Watts) for best single collection. In Other Words would love your vote for Best Wildcard... 

My choices are arbitrary and personal and partly to do with who I think needs the kind of boost that a Saboteur Award would bring. I'm bound to have missed someone. I'm sorry.

Best solo artist is a terrifyingly open field. PM me if you want a suggestion to fit your tastes...