In Search Of An Audience

 I suppose this is everyone's concern.  Just like in a conversation, and we want to be heard, and sometimes we don't listen as well as we should. It's quite human really, this need and desire for communication.

I want to get more traffic for my YouTube site, so that I feel my efforts in making short films are not in vain. Strangely, one of my films seems to be getting an increasing number of hits from as far afield as Saudi Arabia and India and Bangladesh. It is the film I made for the training of social workers, commissioned by my local County Council, West Sussex.

The film I would most like to be seen, over and above my selected entry for the International Festival in Canada, The Chantry, is Uses For Lipstick. This uses as its soundtrack my reading of my poem of the same name, which gained for me my first ever literary prize. Okay, only a £20 Waterstones book token, but I am still incredibly proud of this. It was judged to be the best poem in a competition to write a poem inspired by the movies. Hard not to be inspired by the movies, really.

Perhaps my best chance of gaining a greater audience will be through my writing for a National magazine, one that most people won't ever have heard of, Care Talk. It's fairly new, and is targeted at professionals in they care sector, from carers of all kinds, right through to professionals working in the sector at the highest level.

My first article was published in the December issue, which can be seen online free of charge. Just search for Care Talk, and my article is on page 20 and 21. I am very proud of the photographs, taken by my friend Marc, which capture in a much more documentary style myself and the subject of the article, my favourite taxi driver Len.Taxis take on a totally different meaning when you are a wheelchair user like me. Read the article, and you will see what I mean.

I was able to get one of my poems published as part of the article, Bluebells In The Azured Wood,  an homage to A E  Houseman. Unsurprisingly it was inspired by a visit to a wood with the bluebells just beginning to blossom.

I've got another article being published in the March edition, and the editor has accepted an idea of mine for an article about technology that enables access. Such as the way in which I am writing this blog with the assistance of voice activated software. Now if that isn't an excuse for some of my writing to be published, I don't know what is.

I did have the opportunity of writing the article myself, but I'm glad that the article is to be written by another freelance, because believe it or not I don't want simply to grandstand my work. I would rather someone else had some perspective on it.

Using voice-activated software, once you are used to it, for someone who is most interested in poetry is a fantastic advantage. And the way in which the technology has really improved means that I can type so much faster than once I was able. And since the advice is nearly always to read your work  aloud, I suppose I have the advantage that my work is created using the natural rhythms of speech.

Recently I have discovered the way in which things like this blog entry can be linked to my Facebook page, as I have also discovered any films can be linked. So perhaps that long fabled moment when  technologies converge is almost upon us. All we have to do is to find interesting ways in which to make it interesting. That, as they say, is the rub.