Helloooo 2009

Dear all;

Perhaps I should try and write a poem welcoming 2009 to all off us,
but frankly I can't really be bothered at the moment.

At the moment, I am still coming to terms with the end off 2008 if I am
honest, and now 2009 is with us, I am working slowly but surely towards
the end of the next ‘DIH’ album ‘Metamorphosis’ which I completed the
10th track for it earlier on today. Current plans are suggesting somewhere
around the 14 to 16 track mark for the album, which will take it
somewhere towards the 40 minute mark.

Don’t expect this to happen over-night as this itself has taken the
better part off 2 years to get this far.

Writing wise, after I finished off Poets and Pasties at the end
off November 2008, I took a somewhat quieter approach to
reading and performing afterwards.

I did do a reading at the The Cabaret Formerly Known As Bucket
(http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=23454554933)
at the end off November (just after Poets and Pasties) where I did
two short sets off poems ‘Voices on the Phone’, ‘She’, ‘Confused Identities’
for the 1st set which went down well and ‘Ten and a half lies’ and
‘Fun, Fun, Fun’ which went down really really well in the 2nd half.
‘Fun, Fun, Fun’ was great fun in particular as I got the full of the
audience up to help me out with the chorus for the poem, which
gave me a real real buzz if you know what I mean.

December wise, I did a six poem set at ‘Write Out Loud’ in Sale,
which gave me chance to try out another poem under my alias as
the Feedback Poet where I did a poem called ‘Seven’ as well as two
poems from my ‘Nothing to Save’ poems (Part I and III) which
are really more page poems, as well as one of my Xmas poems
‘Christmas Present Thank you letter’ and two kids poem
‘Brian likes to poke the bear’ and ‘My mum makes Christmas
pudding pasties’ which I enjoyed doing although it did worry me a
lot how under attended the night is. I think the night in question has
got a lot off work to do to keep going, as sadly there simply
isn’t a demand for it I think from the number of people who are
attending. It’s not really my place to say why it isn’t working,
but speaking from personal experience in marketing and P.R.,
if things ain’t going the way they should be going after a few
meetings, a change in thought somewhere.

The following night, Tony talked me into going along to another
open mike poetry night called Inn Verse based in the centre off Manchester (http://www.facebook.com/s.php?ref=search&init=q&q=Inn%20Verse&sid=0cb921d5ee8fd39812c919c8a6c93e8c#/group.php?gid=15047779703)
- this was a bit different to Write Out Loud which was a very serious
atmosphere by being very laid back, and certainly I think it
reflected in my own performance where I read out four poems
’12 Days after Christmas’, ‘Snow Ghost’ (A poem co wrote with a
pal, Audrey ages ago, a cover of a poem by David Rollibard (which
I forget what off the top of my head since) and a oldie called
‘A Lesson in interesting writing’.

I hadn’t being to that event before, but it was nice to
be spotted by the organiser, Simon who introduced me
(even though I had only seen him maybe once before in passing).
It settled me down a lot and I enjoyed reading there. Am glad
I stayed off the beer thou as I saw the effect it had a few other
people who got their poems back to front or in some cases forget
them altogether.

Otherwise, in December I did two radio sessions for my pal,
Coll at Literaryspot for Blogtalk Radio, firstly on 21st
December 2008 with Justin Blackburn which I performed
generally more serious poems, the poems in question being
‘Christmas Poem (2008)’, ‘The Snowman came alive’,
‘Nothing to Hide (I)’ and ‘I found’.

The second interview on there also featured among
others my pal, Kylyra from Dark World International and
my buddy, Gary from Trio Writers and it was a hoot doing
It. On this one, I performed two brand new poems
(which I haven’t performed on the live circuit)
‘Send in the Clowns’ and ‘On the Booze’ with ‘A Lesson in
interesting writing’ thrown in at the end to catch
everybody out.

Now 2009 is here, it is now time to get thinking about
what I am going to do this year. At this moment,
Poets and .. (Formely Poets and Pasties) will be doing
their second event in February 2009, which will take some
work as well a third one probably in April 2009 and I will also
be doing two other performances (I think) in March 2009 and
May 2009, but more details will follow on that soon of course.

I still need to get to the finishing point off ‘The End’ my
novel, which I intend doing a bit more work on over this
week-end (I think it is now 140 pages and around about
40,000 words) but it is looking good.

I also have a number of music projects to finish this year
(See mention to DIH before), but the DIH one will probably
be first I will aim to finish, and then I’ll think about Grey Ear,
White Noise and M.A.N.

All in all, it is going to be a busy year as normal! No change I know!

Keep Rocking

Andy N

Setting Sun – http://www.geocities.com/aen1mpo