Poetry – tempolush.com

Small Press Live Show

By Tempo Lush October 13, 2016 October 13, 2016 Artwork, Comics, Events, Lucy the Octopus

Okay, so a few weeks ago I finished creating the Lucy the Octopus comic strip which I’ve been working on since 2012.

I planned to have a bit of a send off at my favourite comic shop Gosh Comics in Soho, London. I timed the final strip to go online the same day that the last print issue, Just the Dregs, would be released… Thursday 6 Oct 2016.

Parties are always more fun with more people involved and two of my good friends, both immensely talented creators, were kind enough to offer to share celebrations with me. Francesca Dare was launching her latest Penny Blackfeather comic…

And Amber Hsu of One Pound Poems created a special poetry zine in time for the event, The Moon and the Eye…

The good people of Gosh Comics helped prepare, including Nora Goldberg-Fourrel who pulled together a great poster when we barely had any art ready for it…

And soon it was the night of the Small Press Live Show!
Here’s all our new material ready for the party goers to look at and purchase…

Francesca with fellow comic creator Cherish York…

Trying to keep our launches interactive and fun, we asked attendees to write insults for Lucy, as well as some compliments. These would come into play during the musical section of the evening later on…
Box drawings by Francesca…

Writer and cake baker extraordinaire, Nas Bee made some delicious Pear & Chocolate cake for the event…

And we were off! Francesca introduced the night…

…before Amber delighted the crowds with the first of four poems taken from her new collection…

Then Francesca gave us a little insight into the making of Penny Blackfeather (as well as panda romance)…

We’d asked the party goers for some spontaneous questions for Francesca to answer. Some were comic related. Some were way off topic!

Amber treated us to to a beautiful poem on a difficult subject…

Then it was time for the Lucy the Octopus Musical (of sorts), which I’d been writing for a few months. I was glad to have frequent collaborators and musical friends alongside me (from left to right) Miki Mangione on ukulele / vocals, Miss E (Enoma Igiehon) on guitar / vocals (both from my old band Kablooie) and comic creator Sally-Anne Hickman on percussion and vocals.

launch-16-by-cherish
Best selling illustrator Mike Medaglia was kind enough to jump in and control the imagery in the background of the musical…

And the audience did an amazing job learning words and singing along when needed!

The unmistakable silhouette of Andy Oliver of Broken Frontier…

I already knew Amber Hsu is multi-talented but was blown away at how easily and well she handled being narrator. We’d not had a chance to rehearse altogether before, but the first performance was great fun and I’m very proud of my musical troupe…

The evening rolled on with more entertainment! Another poem from Amber, The Poet…

Francesca said a few thank yous…

…and Amber did her final poetry reading of the night…
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Then to round off the entertainment, Miss E and I had a bit of a musical battle (which she clearly won – amazing guitarist that she is) and we all went on to play a surprise cover tune, where Francesca and Amber joined in on maracas…

launch-24-by-cherish

I was very grateful for the amazing contributors who lent their talents to the night and everyone who came along to join in the fun, including my old friend and amazing musician / singer Piney Gir…

From left to right: Writer / cake baker Nas Bee, Francesca Dare, Me, Amber Hsu and talented musician and composer Garo Nahoulakian…

It was a great evening! Cheers all!
Thanks to Nas Bee, Pete Bunzl, Amber Hsu, Tibah Hussain and Cherish York for photos and videos!

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The No Panic Book of Not Panicking

By Tempo Lush June 28, 2016 June 27, 2016 Artwork, Books, Events, Uncategorized

No Panic (Sutton and Merton) is a group of people who meet every week to provide mutual support for their experiences of anxiety. Founded by an incredible woman named Jean Bevan, the group has helped people cope and recover since 1997.

Over the past few months I’ve been proudly working on an extremely worthy project through the fantastic Apples & Snakes Performance Poetry organisation. Apples & Snakes’ amazing Daniela Paolucci asked if I could design and illustrate a book that No Panic (Sutton and Merton) was developing. It would feature poetry and prose plus creative writing activities helmed by the uber-talent, author and performer, Sally Pomme Clayton. Sally Pomme also brought out the writing skills of the group members, and helped develop their abilities to produce some incredible work for the book entitled The No Panic Book of Not Panicking (well-being through creative writing).

Here’s a piece of writing by Robin Bevan in an Online Exclusive page that was developed but not included in the final draft of the book…

And here are some of my illustrations from the finished collection…

The project has shown how taking a valuable goal of creating understanding of a serious mental health issue and fusing it with the creativity of writing prose and poetry has a double win.
Firstly the act of creation itself has clearly been a helpful constructive process for all the writers involved who suffer from anxiety. Secondly the final result has already been appreciated by many readers, breaking down the stigma of mental illness and spreading understanding.

I felt very proud to play a part in what is a significant piece of work, and through the act of collaboration I am proudly bonded with the writers of the book.

On Thursday 16 June, the official launch of the book took place at Sutton Central Library. It was compèred by Sally Pomme, and featured talks and readings by Daniela and many of the contributors to the book, including myself…

There were even official introductions to the event by the head of the local council, Simon Wales, and the deputy mayor of Sutton Nali Patel (far right below, alongside myself, book contributor Lawrence Ashenden and book editor Sally Pomme Clayton…)

The book is a fantastic read to learn more about anxiety, or to directly help anyone suffering themselves. You can pick up a hard copy of the book from any of the Apples & Snakes offices (see branches here and maybe phone to double check first!) or download a PDF version here!

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Making Graphic Narratives from Children’s Stories & Pictures: Part 2

By Tempo Lush July 18, 2014 April 24, 2015 Uncategorized

After writing about the making of a comic using the ideas and images of school children (read all about it here!), it’s time to show more work from Islington Council’s Unheard Voices project. Pupils would collaborate with poets and other creators, as organised by the fantastic performance poetry organisation Apples and Snakes.

Before I joined the project, children had already been working with the serious talent of Performer, Poet and Writer Inua Ellams. He’d gotten them to think about some pretty heavy questions, as you’ll see in the resulting work below.

Inua encouraged the children to express their ideas poetically through symbolism and metaphor. With his guidance, they also focussed on creating atmosphere in their writings considering use of all five senses.

When I joined in, helping out in a series of workshops, showing the children examples of many creators of Poetry Comics such as Bianca Stone and Paul K. Tunis. The pupils showed amazing ability to visualise ideas through symbols.

The class went on to illustrate their own stories based on big questions.

This first group of pupils drew simple images…

…which suited a kind of diary layout for their story.
The next group dealt with the spirituality and truth.
Their drawings were so strong I decided to keep them pretty well as they were, against a plain background.
I used traditional fonts and a two column layout to reflect the idea of a religious text.

Some of the children used nature based images for their stories.

Sometimes I added tone to a drawing or manipulated it a little. At the time of a student drawing the above tree, we discussed repeating the image to form a pattern in the final book.

The story below got pretty dark and the students involved created many images for me to play with.

These lent themselves nicely to a comic book style layout…

Inua’s encouraging the students to consider how the different senses would make a character feel really paid off…

Here I used dark and light backgrounds to represent the idea of danger or lack of it… The images for the next story had a very child friendly look to them.

I reflected this in the layout, though the story itself contrasted with this.

The final story of the collection showed some clear and beautifully drawn pictures…

These were perfect for me to add grey tones to for a slick look.

The work ended up in this fabulous book alongside a comic strip made with other Islington based children.
For details of how that was made have a look at my earlier blog by clicking here!
All in all, a wonderful collection of ideas, story-crafting and drawing from the pupils.

Tag: Poetry

Small Press Live Show

The No Panic Book of Not Panicking

Making Graphic Narratives from Children’s Stories & Pictures: Part 2

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