This time of year is unfortunately busy for me – it’s deadline month (and a bit)! Starting with a short radio play due today, which I’ve been working on for the last few weeks (not quite “The Archers” fare) I’ve also got a chunky essay, two portfolios and a workshop diary due between now and the first week of May. Thus the blog frequency has and probably will decrease again for a little while – I’m gone, but this blog is not forgotten!

Two short things of note recently:

A couple of weeks back, a lecturer set us a short presentation task on performance poetry, picking a poet and presenting our thoughts on their work to Benjamin Zephaniah (thanks Daljit, that wasn’t nerve-wracking at all!). Determined to find something that wasn’t the typical “person shouting angrily into a microphone” I came across Luke Wright, whose characters and style really drew me to his poems. Wright really brings the performance to performance poetry, evidenced beautifully in his poem Essex Lion (Warning: It’s got some swears, so it’s NSFW). Some of Wright’s other stuff is available online, and I’d definitely recommend checking it out.

The second thing is concerning my own work. With this drama/ radio play assignment we have received access to and training for the recording and editing suites that we have on campus. Depending on how I manage to balance my workload as well as the room availability, I hope to record readings of some of my work and post them here via YouTube, Soundcloud or something of the like. I’ll be selecting a few pieces that I think would benefit most from being read i.e. mostly poetry but I may write some new material with “performance” in mind!

So readers, in case I vanish for a month to research sestinas and post-colonialism, have a good Easter!