Open Mic

I spent Sunday evening 28/1/18 at an Open Mic night in High Wycombe. This was slightly out of my usual area for Open Mic and I went there primarily to watch some friends performing at their home venue. I usually have seen them closer to where I live and I felt it was only fair to pay homage to them in their familiar surroundings. As I had hoped, there was an eclectic bunch of performers who performed covers and their own compositions (songs and music).

Firstly for me I saw Tina playing country music, which is not something that I usually like “not my bag,” (bit hippie sounding) but whether it was the change of venue or the amp, she sounded better than usual. She then gave way to Lorraine whom I have seen perform loads of times. It is difficult to categorise her musical style save to say that she relies not only on her guitar but her voice and that came in useful as she is a great acapella singer. Dave treated us to a few of his usual hits and a cover of Mustang Sally, with harmonica played by Freedom.

As I usually go to Spoken Word at this venue, I went to see Dane, in a completely different guise as a guitarist and singer. I was happy to say that Dane can play and can sing. It was good to see this different side of him.  Bit jealous of this lot as I am a frustrated guitar player. My own fault though as I SHOULD PRACTICE MORE.

Sadly before I went out, I found out that the head on my electric acoustic guitar had snapped off. I have only had it for a year. This reminded me of a poem that I wrote when I was at a different open mic called “I Need To Pick Up My Guitar” which is my lament at how I need to do just that. I suppose that I am getting better in that I am practicing and putting tunes to song embryonic songs that I have written.

As promised in my first post, I agreed to start writing my book. Having been speaking to Dane earlier in the month and having read some articles he had sent me, I will report on my progress so far. Previously I had started to re-draft of all my poems and have begun to triage and categorise them, some I think are good, I have removed some and written some new ones.

I have set up an account on CreateSpace and had a play around with the cover creator and a formatted template. (see below links). Using what I have written so far it was interesting to see what a book may look like. I still have, lots to do and I will report on this further. I have thought of a title and the sections of the book.

I then have had some other ideas so may have to re-categorise and re-title. Who knows, I may be writing 2 books at once!! Everything is exciting so far!! Need to keep this enthusiasm

I will add a few links that I have found useful so far.

https://www.thebookdesigner.com/2014/03/lyn-horner/

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-self-publish-book-dane-cobain/?published=t

Two poetry blogs I have read

https://josephinecorcoran.org/

https://www.writeoutloud.net/profiles/fredvarden

Author: Joe Campling

Joseph Campling lives in Buckinghamshire, and is married with adult children. He trained as a both a General and Mental Health Nurse in the South East of the United Kingdom in the mid 1980’s and has worked in various roles over the past 30 years. His first authored article in 2007 was jointly written about the need to share positive research based practice amongst care teams locally which was then published in a professional journal. He published “Mild Musings May Mitigate My Mentality” which was his first collection of poems in 2018. He has subsequently published MERRING or is it MRS GREN? Having written sporadically over the years (usually for friends and family) he has been writing more consistently over the past two years and has begun to recite his poetry at various Open Mic nights and Spoken Word events. He is often found ‘scribbling’ and then performing what he has just written. He recently has also been collaborating with a jazz composer by writing lyrics which have been put to music. His interests include watching live music, trying to play the guitar (still project in progress) and quizzing. He also likes to watch TV; mostly factual documentaries, comedy and quiz shows He also needs to read more and swears that he will do so very soon as he has a pile of books to read. He also ‘hangs out’ with members of the local drama club although he has no plans to act but is partial to the odd pint of orange juice and lemonade!! He follows rugby and can sometimes be found cheering his team on (London Irish) whether they win or lose. View all posts by Joe Campling