I am a lazy blogger; I had my suspicions that this would turn out to be the case and it seems that, as ever, I am absolutely correct.
The good news is that I can give you my plans and whatnot all at once and it'll sound like so much more than it would in tiny sentences; you'll weep with excitement into that half can of cold beans and flaking candle stub.
Hammer and Tongue has exciting plans for 2009. We've got some great performers lined up this year; for more info on what has and will be going on, see:
http://www.thehussy.co.uk/rosy-carrick/01/
and also:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/urbanundiscovered/hammer-and-tongue-komedia
In terms of the latter link, I'm not sure how useful it is to the local poetry scene to suggest that its renewed popularity has mostly to do with its relocation into another spoken word genre - see in particular:
"The hip-hop connection has been good news for the poets. 'Now that people have made the association with hip-hop, we're perceived to be a similar thing, ... [t]he 'p' factor doesn't exist any more, we've overcome that. Poetry is a cool thing in Brighton.'"
Shall we feel proud like George Kirrin, accepted at last by the cousins; after all, she CAN climb a tree as well as most boys and swim better than any of them. No one will ever know we're still poets; we just have to wear baggier clothes and cram stuff into a 4-bar.
In other news, my workshop programmes are expanding. This Spring I'll be starting up a second weekly KS1&2 group and also one for more elderly children, or, as they may prefer to be called, 'young adults'. I'll also be taking a couple of sessions as part of the Little Green Pig project in February and March. See www.littlegreenpig.org.uk for more info on what they do.
My next performance is on Feb 13th at Tight Lip in Brighton. I'll post up full details of this and other upcoming gigs in the near future, but for now I am off.
As off as gorgonzola.
