Poetry cards

Just now, I'm making poetry cards to use as fliers or greetings cards or even bookmarks depending on the size. All made from recycled materials of course! Some examples: a haiku on the back of a Japanese phonecard, an extract from a poem about tea on part of an old tea box, a poem about the world map on the timezone map torn out of an old diary..... I'm coming up with several great ideas to recycle old materials whilst publicising my work!

Haiku - memory of Lake Malawi

Moon washed baobabs
Pleiades sharp on black sky
the dark lake quiet

Recycled Toys

When I was at the International Playbus Congress in Turin, I attended a workshop at the Serendipity Ludoteca (www.comune.torino.it/gioco), making toys from recycled materials.

I of course made a cardboard dancing rabbit, using used cardboard, used string and non-toxic paint. Any resemblance to our own rabbit Anya is entirely intentional!

The carrot is attached to strings at the back of the model so that when you pull the carrot the strings make the limbs move.

Altered Book 1

Now that I'm back from Italy, I'm starting to put together my first altered book. The book itself is mostly in Italian, which makes an ideal background for this scrapbook. I'm trying to keep as much as possible to the principles of recycling for this altered book, eg I'm not intending to print out digital photos to include. I'll customise our Plane Tickets Travel Wallet to hold my non-digital photos to complement the book. I've started the book with a double page spread on the Museum of Cinema in Turin, which is housed in the tallest building in Turin, the Mole Antonelliana. I cut out a drawing of the building from a publicity leaflet and pasted it onto a background that I had coloured to vaguely illustrate the hills around Turin. I've used pencil crayons as they seemed the best option for the glossy paper in this book. The first article on the page is about theatre and is followed by an article on Turin's football team, which offered some approriate words that I highlighted in the second part of this double spread, where I have pasted our tickets to the exhibition of science fiction films that was showing when we visited the museum. It's an excellent museum too...

Haiku for Winter

Sheep in the Fields. Snow.
Crows on the crest of the hill.
Aftermath of storm.

In Italy

I'm in Italy for three weeks from tomorrow! I'll try to update this during the International Playbus Congress, which has loads of interesting workshops on environmental activities worth blogging (if my Italian is good enough to understand what's going on!) I'm less likely to update during my holiday! Ciao!

Malawi Drought

Malawi is a small landlocked country in southern Africa. Currently the country is facing drought and severe food shortages. For more information, including how you can help, visit Oxfam's Southern Africa pages: http://www.oxfam.org.uk/what_we_do/emergencies/country/safrica05/.

I lived in Malawi from 2000 - 2002, teaching sciences in a Girls School in Malindi, on the shores of Lake Malawi. My poetry pamphlet 'Bougainvillea Dancing' was published in response to the last Malawian drought.