I really must stop over-using that Teardrop Explodes quotation, but it's damn hard not to today. My plinth appearance has been reported in an actually rather wonderful piece in the local newspaper, the Sunderland Echo. I'm on page ten of the print edition - can't find any reference on the website, though, but I'm not too worried about that. They'll probably get it on there eventually, and if they don't at least the thing I feared happening - getting bumped to the website but not making it into print - didn't occur. It feels good seeing myself in the paper. Print gives things some kind of validation.
Despite my Sontag-esque musings yesterday, the accompanying photo came out rather well too, I think. I mean I've only glanced at it out of the corner of my eye, but it seems to make me look like a normal and respectable human being, so the photographer, Corrina, has done an extremely good job there.
News also arrives from the excellent Streetcake magazine, who have accepted a poem of mine for publication in their next issue. I was turned on to Streetcake - which sounds vaguely like a line you might hear in a Chris Morris spoof - by the blindingly fabulous Angela Readman, who suggested I send them some material when I was casting about for places to submit to as part of my clumsy, faltering attempts to get back on the poetry horse. And I'd be glad that she put me on to them even if they hadn't accepted my work, because theirs is a genuinely interesting publication, a poetry online mag that shows a commendable interest in using the fact that they publish to screen rather than page to take a more adventurous approach to the visual appearance of the work they publish. My poem, 'The Mechanics of the Scissorhold', will be published in issue 7, due soon, but there's a lot of interesting stuff to peruse at their site while you wait for it. Go read.
In other news, a Blackberry owner is now me. I finally took the decision to get me one of those new-fangled smartypants-phones after concluding that lugging a laptop down to London to receive peoples' tweets for my collaborative plinth poem would be just too much hassle - especially given that I have a Roland Microcube to lug down there too - and that, while I needed something small and portable which could quickly process tweets, my dislike of touchscreens precluded me buying an iPhone. Yes, I know, I'm a keyboard-loving dinosaur doomed to never fit in with the coolest kids when we all live in some Minority Report world where we write everything by grabbing floaty letters out of the air. So what? A Blackberry is tremendously ahead of the curve for me. Remember, I still genuinely feel aggreived at the demise of the 3 1/4" floppy (it was the noise; that satisfying thump-click as you slid the bad boy in and got ready for business. You don't get that action from one of yer weeny little USB sticks.).
And so, with the amp here and working, the comms taken care of, and the media informed, it's all just down on me now to rehearse this thing and try to make it the best that I can. Having completed my first full rehearsal I can say that initial impressions are good. Maybe it's just that Fish Manor has better acoustics for practicing in, but I really feel now that I'm finding my voice again, and looking forward to running my dirty little mouth off in public again for all you beautiful little monsters. More updates as and when...
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