Collectorz, Councils, students and speakers

Over the last few weeks I've been indexing my books. This became necessary because I lend so many out that it has become difficult to remember who I lent to. There is some excellent indexing software out there, and I eventually chose the product from collectorz.com www.collectorz.com because it handles loans, wish lists and locations pretty well, and it is also compatible with my bar-code scanner. It turns out that of the 347 books I've indexed so far 79 are poetry books and 29 are about the craft of writing (I include critiques and books on linguistics and literary theory  in this).
What surprised me even more was the fact that my non-fiction, so far, outnumbers my fiction by a big margin. History, which I hated at school,  is my biggest non-fiction category, for fiction crime/detective and science fiction are running pretty close. I'll keep you updated as I continue indexing.

Over the last six months I've been in touch with the local council on and off about the trees in property they own adjacent to mine. Some of them have grown very close to my house, the branches now touch the house and scrape the roof and I'm afraid that the roots may be doing the same to the foundations. The officer who ran the "green spaces" section came out lasy August and agreed to remove 5 trees by March. When this hadn't been done I got in touch with the council again and the same man came out. This time he couldn't recall coming previously, would certainly not have promised to remove trees and didn't think the land belonged to them anyway. I got a call next day to confirm that the land does belong to them - which I knew because he had checked before - and that contractors would be out as soon as possible to trim overhanging branches back. 4 weeks on and I'm still waiting.

My daughter has finished her degree and I hired a van yesterday to bring her property back home. The room she has let is very damp and everything is covered in mould or has a sheen of spores. Why are landlords allowed to let rooms that are clearly a hazard to the occupiers and their property? Why aren't they liable for the damage their rooms cause?

On a much nicer note I'd like to thank everyone who has come to the Spoken Worlds open mic night over the last 18 months. The quality has been excellent and the geographic diversity almost as wide as the diversity in styles and genres. We have had regulars from Tamworth, Lichfield, Buxton, Chesterfield, Leicester, Ashby, Worcester, Birmingham, Derby, Nottingham and also the local groups. One-off visitors have come from even further afield. Styles have tanged from stand-up to song, from poetry to monologues to storytellers and sketches. Over the next few months I hope to have one or two guest artists to liven events up even more.

Pictures of the events so far are spread across facebook, flickr and my website at present, I'm hoping to unify them soon.

Thank you and well done, all.

Polesworth Poetry Trail 2 Launch

Polesworth Poetry Trail 2 Launch, a set on Flickr.

On Tuesday I attended the launch of the poems for the second part of the Polesworth Poetry Trail. Seventeen poets will be represented on the second part of the trail, fifteen attended the launch. Hearing the poets read their work for the first time I was struck by how much better it is to hear the words rather than just reading them. The night itself was brilliant entertainment, the poems will be placed on artworks around the canal and Pooley Park.

PS I love you/satnav I don't

This week I started a 5 session short course at Nottingham University organised by The Poetry School.
The whole experience so far, with the exception of my navigation (more later), has been a dream. Enrolment was  fast, simple and the lady on the phone was extremely helpful. The room at the university was excellent and the tutor, Matthew Welton, has already started the sparks in my brain again.

Matthew is a lecturer at Nottingham and a ground breaking poet. I bought his book We needed coffee but... about 2 months ago and would say that if you have a safe cosy view of what constitutes poetry then you might hate it, but if you are happy to have your preconceptions challenged then it is certainly a book worth trying. It doesn't always come off, but often enough.

The navigation problem was born of me trusting my sat nav once I arrived at the university. It knows where all the roads are, but sent me through the campus twice and tried to take me in the wrong direction the third time.