Showing posts with label tigers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tigers. Show all posts

Wednesday, 9 March 2011

Tiger Tiger poets, women's day and a dolphin

Last Saturday was the launch of the Tiger Tiger event at Bookmark Bloxwich. Organised by Helen Calcutt and Peter Tinkler, it was raising awareness of the plight of the tiger in the wild. it is rapidly declining and unless action is taken this incredible, inspiring beast could be lost forever.

Helen invited poets and artists to submit to her blog and the event at Bloxwich was a night of spoken word inspired by the tiger. It was headlined by Richard Bonfield who read some of his powerful, poignant poems and he also spoke passionately about the Born Free foundation. There were ten poets altogether and it was fascinating to hear the different interpretations of tiger poetry. This is a review of the night.



painting by Peter Tinkler

Last night was another brilliant night of poetry, verse and stand up comedy at the Oxfam Worcester' 'A Bit of Do.' It was to celebrate International Women's Day.

Many thanks to the organiser Amamnda Bonnick because it raised £225! It was lovely to spend the evening with friends and be well entertained.



And the dolphin? 'A freshwater dolphin found only in China is now "likely to be extinct", a team of scientists has concluded. The researchers failed to spot any Yangtze river dolphins, also known as baijis, during an extensive six-week survey of the mammals' habitat.' Richard Bonfield was kind enough to email his poem about Yangtze River Dolphin. I cried after reading it because I felt so powerless, I had no idea they were extinct. The utter, tragic shame of it.A beautiful animal, gone forever.Richard's poem was stunning, like a dream, a glimpse of the dolphin and then gone. Just like real life.

image of sadness

Donate and help all endangered animals right now! 



Wednesday, 27 October 2010

Tiger, Tiger, your light is dimming...

The last few weeks I have been working on poems about tigers. In the past I have been more concerned with the plight of the orangutan but I have been thinking a lot about the tiger because my small son has developed a great love for them and our house is full of stuffed toys, books and pictures. He also likes me to paint his face with stripes so he can BE a tiger.

A friend posted a link on facebook about a new project to raise awareness about the tiger through art...

"The Tiger Tiger campaign  is an arts and fundraising project, founded by arts for education company The Written Image in May 2010. The aim? – To raise awareness through art.  Its quite simple isn’t it? There are less than 3,200 tigers left in the wild.  By 2022, Tigers could be extinct."

It prompted a surge of thoughts about how tragic it would be to live in a world without tigers. They are so beautiful and graceful, fierce and lonesome, my son loved them as soon as he was old enough to articulate it. I think all humans feel in awe of the big cats. The poem I submitted was chosen to appear on the blog the week. There will be new poems and fiction pieces posted each week so please click on the link and check it out. The travel piece by Andrew Kirby is incredibly vivid.