A Book of Poetry about Love, God, Madness and Sexuality – Mairead Meade

I'm happy to have helped poet Mairead Meade to publish her collected work on Blurb. Here's her introduciton to the book.
"I started writing poetry to handle my feelings of love as an adolescent teenager. At 17, an event happened in my life that would forever shape me. I began to question my sexuality. Soon after, I fell for a boy and was convinced he was my soulmate. I wrote much poetry through this period of unrequited love. At 18, I fell in love again, this time with a girl, and I became convinced not only was I gay but that she was my true love. This was the beginning of my journey into Paranoia and Schizophrenia as this love grew. In 1995, I found God through various metaphysical experiences. I travelled to Sunderland in the U.K. in 1996 to study B.A. Communications Studies at the University of Sunderland. By early 1997, I had a nervous breakdown and was in hospital in St. Mary's Hospital in Paddington, London. "Blossoms" is a collection of poems from that period. My poetry is about Love, God, Madness and Sexuality. To me, every poem is a blossom of feeling and thought through words.

 I'd like to share my poetry with the world as I believe there is a lot in my writing that can help heal people. By reading my words, I am sure many others can relate to me. "

 Mairéad Meade

Blossoms by Mairead Meade is available to buy on Blurb

Richard Florida – Who's Your City?

I really did say to myself in 2004 " It doesn't matter where I do my MA, it's more about what I do and what I want from it". Well, ahem, I discovered that I got that so wrong. It did matter, and it does matter where I live. A friend of mine, who was also on that course was fascinated by how the city environment affects us, and did an amazing project on psychogeography. Anyhows, I also realise the power of place when I check out the hits to one of my sites and see that there's something about California, Texas and New York that seems to return to it. I like the Monocle 'Top 25 Most Liveable Cities', because I like the magazine. So, when I came across this book I immediately ordered it:

It’s a mantra of the age of globalization that where you live doesn’t matter ... According to Richard Florida, this is wrong. Place is not only important, it’s more important than ever... Globalization is not flattening the world; on the contrary, the world is spiky. Place is becoming more relevant to the global economy and our individual lives. The choice of where to live, therefore, is not an arbitrary one. It is arguably the most important decision we make, as important as choosing a spouse or a career. In fact, place exerts powerful influence over the jobs and careers we have access to, the people meet and our “mating markets” and our ability to lead happy and fulfilled lives.

On his creative class website, are interesting data maps and a nice questionnaire to help you compare your own choice of top cities. Below, a global map of innovation locations, and personality areas in the States.

Beste Miray Dogan — Mapenvelop

Oh I do love an indexhibit site. I do I do. There's always something wonderful to discover in a template place, that is filled lovingly. So, via something called 'radar' in tumblr, I stumbled onto this beautiful and witty envelope. Neat idea!

Beste Miray Dogan

On blogging

There are blogs and there are blogs. How many blogs are there? Of course we can't really know because there is no way of counting accurately. When asking Google to respond, it linked me to this article in the blogherald from last year which gave an out-dated number of 112.8million not including the 72.82million at least in China. I can only surmise that the vast majority of these blogs have readership levels approximate to my own. (I'm speaking to myself here!) On the other hand, there is popularity: in the range of 500,000+ readers, e.g Zen Habits. That's more than the 327,937 daily sold circulation of the Guardian. I've done a quick search to find the established list of 'Most Read Blogs in the World 2009' but there is no list I can find so far. (Anyone know?). It's a fascinating idea of course, that something so personal and immediate can, by dint of simple 'word-of-links' and consistent quality entries build to what is equivalent to a national paper.

For the rest of us however, we can be happy to use our blogettes for purposes more humble and utilitarian. The students I work with in LCC have started their own and some of them have already built up a series of great entries which has set me thinking about my own. How can I make the most use of this space? What does it do for me? What do I say? For me, it's about finding a voice by building a series of tagged and articulated 'thoughts' (entries). It's a way of remembering out loud... of not just liking or bookmarking something, but committing it to one's own space. I'm guessing here, but maybe blogs are the contemporary version of songs, jokes, doodles, photo albums and letter-writing. We don't have that direct contact with family/friends/colleagues and community as before, but we are of course the same creatures. We can get to know ourselves and each other in different ways now, and maybe blogs are one of them?