A Dead Good Blog: blogging

Showing posts with label blogging. Show all posts

Saturday, 10 July 2021

A Decade Of Dead Good Blogs

23:56:00 Posted by Steve Rowland #328, Blackpool, blogging, Past And Future, Pivotal, poetry, Saturday Blog, Steve Rowland 27 comments

As birthday celebrations go, the poor old DGB's has been a bit muted this week, even something of an anti-climax, with just one blog (this one) and a quick post on the Dead Good Poets' Facebook page in commemoration.

I personally thought it was appropriate to mark the occasion. After all, ten years of Dead Good Blogging (and views in excess of a million) is a decent achievement for any online platform, let alone one based in Blackpool and dedicated to poetry and creative writing. I figured it was only right to recognise the initiative that got it all going a decade ago and the bloggers (both regulars and guests) who have kept it rolling - but that appears to be a minority view, which makes me feel a little sad. 😞

Of course the personnel and driving forces have changed over time as is only to be expected. It got off to a rattling start in 2011, based around students and their tutors engaged in English/Creative Writing BAs and MAs at Blackpool College under the auspices of Lancaster University. It was seen as a written word extension to Blackpool's Dead Good Poets' monthly open mic nights, with a team of regular bloggers posting six days a week on a given weekly theme in a variety of styles, exploring topics of interest, examining the creative process, pouring out great posts and some amazing poetry, all with the possibility of it reaching a wide audience because of the immediacy of the internet. Within three years it had racked up 1,000 posts and had won itself an award. Thank you Ashley, Lara, Lindsay, Shaun and Vicky for giving it life and substance.

before online

The DGB hit its first serious bump in the road in 2013/4 over the issue of fracking and the fact that Blackpool college benefitted from fracking company monies. There were fallings out and resignations (all of this before I was part of the collective, so I don't know all the ins and outs but it was a divisive issue). New regular bloggers stepped up as some ex-bloggers even asked to have all their posts deleted, a request that was duly complied with.

In fact none of the founding core members has contributed since 2015. I did invite them to guest blog this week for old time's sake, but there was no great enthusiasm to re-visit an old chapter of their lives. A couple of them were even surprised to learn that the DGB is still a going concern. No matter. As one of them stated back in 2014 at the time of resigning: "I hope the DGP can go from strength to strength now. I'm fairly sure the blog will continue to excel with the excellent writers who currently contribute - and the wonderful ones you'll be able to get in future." And so it has proved.

Over the decade there has been a rolling cast of of eighteen regular bloggers, who for as long as they could manage it (more often than not), have committed to writing on their given day to the weekly theme. For thirteen of the 'retired' regular blogger, their posts can be found under their names in the 'Previous Bloggers' section of the website. All the posts of the still active regular bloggers can be found under their names in the 'Current Bloggers' section, along with blogs written by a very long list of guest bloggers and all their posts are still accessible on the website. Poignantly, two of those guest poets, Christo Heyworth and David Riley, are no longer of this earth.

In addition to the DGB, Blackpool Dead Good Poets who morphed into Lancashire Dead Good Poets' Society (not to be confused with Liverpool's excellent Dead Good Poets' Society) have continued to hold monthly open mic nights (for the last year and a half via zoom) and have published a number of themed pamphlets of writers' work (including A Poets' Guide To Blackpool, Pelts To Petticoats, Walking On Wyre and The Big One), though the Dead Good Blog remains by far both the most extensive and impressive collection of prose and poetry and it has been my pleasure to curate and promote it for the last six years, in addition to writing the Saturday Blog.

Despite the proscriptive changes and restrictive algorithms that have been introduced by both Facebook and Google in the last few years, the analytics show that the Dead Good Blog is still on the rise, with around 15,000 'views' per month over the last five years and the million views milestone passed at the end of 2020 - which continues to make it a worthwhile forum and a platform for local writers to air their workings on.

the rise of the Dead Good Blog

My only regret is that more readers of the blogs don't find the inclination or time to leave comments or feedback (less than 1% in fact).

Well okay, that's the last ten years acknowledged, appraised and celebrated. Now it's time to look forward to the next however many and whatever may come. There are currently three (more or less) regular bloggers aiming to post on their appointed day to the allocated theme each week. There are spaces for at least three more. If you think you'd like to give it a go - and believe me, it is a great catalyst/prompt to creative writing - please get in touch and ask for details. If you fancy the idea of writing just an occasional blog to see how it goes, do likewise. The list of weekly topics is available for six months in advance, which gives plenty for thinking/research time. You don't need to do anything except submit your blog in plain text or MS word format and the admin team takes care of the rest. It would be great to have some new creatives and fresh voices adding to the next phase in the DGB's life. If you are interested, please email: deadgoodpoets@hotmail.co.uk

future proofing

I've no new poem to post this week, and the hour is getting late. If you're desperate to read something, here's a link to the most read Dead Good Blog of all: That Greek Cottage and if that doesn't satisfy you, go to the homepage of the website at www.deadgoodpoets.blogspot.com where you'll find 2,000 Dead Good blogs awaiting you.

Thanks for reading. Until next week, S ;-)

Wordpool

05:00:00 Posted by Steve Rowland #126, A Bit OED, Anabiosis, Blackpool, blogging, books, Creative Process, Saturday Blog, Steve Rowland 3 comments

For anybody curious about the theme of the blog, it was chosen in deference to Blackpool's Festival Of Written Word which has been hosted by Blackpool Arts & Libraries across three days and four sites this week. It's the 11th annual Wordpool event and has been hugely enjoyed by all who have participated. If you're intrigued to see what you missed, check out this link: www.wordpoolfestival.co.uk

When it comes to the correct use of words, I'll admit to being a bit OED! If I were ever cast away on a desert island, I'd happily swap out a copy of The Bible for a good dictionary (Oxford English for preference). I derive great pleasure from words and love discovering new ones. This week's new word is anabiosis : the ability to regain life after apparently dying (from desiccation or drying out) - just add water! I've woven it into today's poem.

I suppose a love of words goes hand-in-hand with a love of books and reading (or being read to) which I've enjoyed for almost as long as I can remember. I have two people to thank for that: the wonderful Miss Griffiths, my Infants' School teacher (when I was 6/7 years old), who used to read to the class for 20 minutes every afternoon; and my Dad who enrolled me at the same age at my local library in Peterborough. It probably also helped that we didn't possess a television set until I was nearly 11! Reading was a constant thrill and I can still recall the pleasure I got from The Young Detectives (R.J. McGregor), The Future Took Us (David Severn), The Silver Sword (Ian Serraillier), The Woolpack (Cynthia Harnett), Moonfleet (J. Meade Faulkner), all of the Swallows & Amazons books (Arthur Ransome), The Thirty-Nine Steps and Greenmantle (John Buchan). They paved the way to Austen, Dickens, Eliot, Hardy, Huxley, Woolf, Orwell and beyond.

I read English and American Literature at Warwick University and then taught English and Drama in a north London comprehensive school for a number of years. I promised the kids I taught that I would write them a book one day - a promise still to be fulfilled! (The closest I got was writing the scripts for staff pantomimes and adapting a selection of Canterbury Tales for a school play.)

Getting back to this week's Festival Of Written Word, the highlight for me was listening to Ben Aaronovitch on Thursday evening talking candidly and very amusingly about the trials, tribulations and occasional pleasures of being a (best-selling) novelist. I've really enjoyed Aaronovitch's Rivers Of London series of books - six to date with a seventh on the way - which he describes as a mix of urban fantasy crime, folklore and myth. It was interesting to meet him as a person and useful to hear the advice he had to share with anyone wanting to get a book out of themselves and into the world. As you might imagine, many novels are written but few are chosen (published)... nevertheless, I shall give it a go when I can free up thinking and writing time from my responsibilities within Blackpool Supporters' Trust and our ongoing campaign for regime change at our football club.

Artwork for Blackpool's Festival Of Written Word

One of the reasons I started blogging nearly three years ago was as a compensation for not having the time to devote to novel-writing. Finding a few hours a week to write a blog (and a poem if I'm particularly inspired) had to be an easier task than finding the several hours every day to wrestle the words of a novel into being.

I'd like to finish with a few thoughts about the creative process as a segue into the poem. I've been writing (off and on) for the best part of fifty years and what happens when it 'clicks' is still something of a mystery to me. One takes a bunch of words and phrases, some concept of a framework to employ them in and then one of three things happens: worst case nothing worthwhile results; very often perspiration and craft triumph (after a fashion) and something workmanlike and reasonably presentable, entertaining and perceptive emerges; just occasionally inspiration huffs its intangible magic into the enterprise and a very special piece of prose or poetry is forged almost without or beyond conscious effort. Today's poem, although it probably falls into the middle ground of workmanlike, presentable and perceptive, tries to encapsulate what happens in that magic process beyond conscious effort - in the wordpool...

Wordpool
Throw down dry words
and desiccated thoughts
without constraint
and let them fall, fall, fall,
all a tumble and a jumble
into the chaotic whorl
of the wordpool.......and wait.

Focus for a while elsewhere.
Enjoy a scratch, sink a beer.
Ignore the sign that says
'Nothing is original anymore'.

In the anabiotic depths,
out of the swirl and hubble-bubble,
who knows what subtle
alphabetical phosphorescence,
what striking metaphysical concordance
is preparing to break surface
and make perfect sense?

Thanks for reading. Have a tremendous week, S ;-)

Bloggers let loose

10:48:00 Posted by Unknown blogging, culling, displacement, Loose, Rachel McAlpine, Sheilagh, Writing 2 comments

One of the challenges of blogging to a predetermined theme is the imperative to find a link between that theme and one’s own experiences. The link can be clear or tenuous, or loose. It is up to the hapless blogger to conjure up something vaguely relevant. They can then use their writing to provide for the reader something of interest that might happily distract the reader from the inescapable fact that relevance to the theme is - er, nil. Not even loose.

So, blogging can be an exercise in obfuscation. It can also be a test of the writer’s political dexterity. You know how politicians in interviews make a point of answering ad nauseam the question they wish they’d been asked, the question they’re pre-programmed to answer, rather than the awkward one they’ve actually been asked? (cf Paxman v Michael Howard, Newsnight) Thus can the blogger fulminate at length on a preferred theme, draw the reader in and cause them to forget what the theme was supposed to be!

Speaking of displacement, writing this has been a temporary hiatus in an unpleasant and painful activity Dave and I have been engaged in for the last few days. We have had to face up to the reality that our imminent house move necessitates a traumatic culling of our books, for we cannot fit a magnum into a pint pot. The selection process has been rigorous, not always observed and the sight of literally hundreds of our precious books awaiting disposal is deeply distressing and depressing. I am trying to feel relaxed and – um, loose about this – and failing miserably!

On blogging, I will leave the last word to poet and blogger, Rachel McAlpine, on how she approaches blogging. Like most writers she saves up her jottings and musings, just waiting for the right and appropriate moment to release them.

Stuff in a blog

Let’s not pretend
that stuff in a blog
is poetry.

A blog is a diary
upside down, a silo
where notions wait
for processing
or better times.

Crammed tight
they twitch
in the dark.
They long to sprout
and see the light.

Let’s spill them out
and set them free.
At worst the birds
will feast.

Rachel McAlpine

Thank you for reading.

Sheilagh

Space

07:30:00 Posted by Damp incendiary device Abdul, blogging, myspace, poetry, space 4 comments

by Abdul Dawood (Abdulicious)

The Space we create

This is my space, that is your space,

We separate our sides via the show lace,

But that was then when we were ten,

Balling on a budget, love hearts in the sand

Till the kids decide to smudge it,

Now we want our place, our personal space,

So we look at the mortgage rates,

But we are not quite there given our financial state,

So that is a wrong move, log on to Right Move,

See your face, as we look to rent a space,

Pine wood doors, marble floors,

It's all yours, doing the chores, now we built a foundation

Like all 4’s, See this is the space we create,

Now we deviate, from the old space to the new space,

And every months she wants her own space menstruation,

And we get cross with each other like a Christian,

I need some breathing space See, so I take her space on the settee

Kicked out the bedroom, until her cycle stops,

Got 1 eye on the calendar like a Cyclops,

See that is when we make love faces, make love spaces,

My heart races, and then its back to basics,

I then get audacious, and move the furniture to make it more spacious,

That’s when you get ferocious, and get it poppin like Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,

See our space could have turned out different,

Could be sleeping on a bench in the park,

Or in a cardboard box my palace in the dark,

Sometimes I end up in the dog house when I bark,

Or if I over step the mark, it gives me space to rediscover that spark,

Abdulicious 2014

This is my first time writing for the Dead Good Blog. I focused on the theme which was space. I mean we all need space sometimes time away from wife, girlfriend, work, friends and family and just need our space to be alone. And I decided to cover that in the poem. Sometimes we need space for a good reason e.g. it can be when we watch our son or daughter take their first steps towards us, or when we create a space for our first child's room it must be an amazing feeling. You could even move into a bad space like one with noisy neighbours, mice and other vermin. Space is so spacious there are countless ways I can determine space. But I feel I have covered a lot of space in my first blog. Please do leave your thoughts on my space. Which is the place below which is marked comments. I don’t actually have a Myspace page.

Milestone

07:30:00 Posted by Damp incendiary device 1000, ashley, blogging, celebration, Cerridwen, colin, lara, lindsay, Louise, shaun, Sheilagh, teamwork, vicky 2 comments

This week will see us reach 1,000 posts on the Dead Good Blog. In celebration of that fact, the current bloggers will be creating found poetry using snippets from our favourite past posts.

It goes without saying that I am just as proud of this blog today as I was in June 2011 when the first post went live. Since then, we have seen an abundant variety of inspiring and surprising posts on poetry, for the most part, and writing in general. I want to take this opportunity to say thank you to everyone who has ever written, or commented, for us and express my desire that the blog should stretch on for another 1,000 posts as it continues to engage readers and writers across the world.

Here is my found poem. If you click on any line you will find yourself transported to a piece of imaginative blogging. Enjoy!