Brand New Moderator Announcement
 

Dear Erastophereans,

I am pleased to announce your brand new Eratosphere moderator -- here's to a huge welcome to Sarah-Jane Crowson (who's actually been here for a while now)! She's now the moderator for the Art forums.

You already know quite a bit about Sarah-Jane from her active participation at the Sphere for quite some time now . . . although some of you may not know that:

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Sarah-Jane is a collage artist and educator. Her work is inspired by fairytales, psychogeography, and surrealism. She uses collage to re-imagine and subvert traditional narratives, exploring the space between real and imagined. She is an educator at Hereford College of Arts, and a postgraduate researcher at Birmingham City University, investigating ideas of the 'critical radical rural'. Sarah-Jane's work can be seen in various journals, including Rattle, Waxwing Literary Journal, Petrichor, Sugar House Review and Iron Horse Literary Review. She was shortlisted for the Haiku Foundation ‘Touchstone’ award in 2020. You can find her on Twitter @Sarahjfc or on her website at www.sarahjanecrowson.art
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Please join me in giving a hearty Eratosphere welcome to Sarah-Jane!

Cheers,

...Alex

Great choice! Welcome Sarah-Jane!

Welcome indeed! Art feels in good hands.

Cheers,
John

Congratulations and welcome, Sarah! A fine choice.

Thank you Alex! And thank you Ann and John. And thank you Matt (we cross-posted)

It's so lovely that the Sphere has art forums!

I'll do my best to offer constructive peer critique to any art and visual poetry that is posted, similar to the type of critique that I've benefited from in the metrical forums.

I was talking to the very lovely Jayne Osborne, and she suggested that an informal challenge might be a fun thing to run in the art forums to celebrate them (a challenge that involves poetry and doesn't require robust drawing skills).

So..a challenge:

Poetry/Image match challenge.

Have you a poem which yearns for an image to accompany it? If so, then the challenge is to either create an image yourself which works with your poem, or find an image that works with your poem and share it.

This isn't a reverse ekphrastic challenge - it's more about you choosing an image that you think adds to your poem in some way. Think about it in the same way that you'd choose cover art for a chapbook or the image accompanying the work in an online journal!

Once you've chosen an image, please post a link to the image to this thread in the art forum, with your poem.


(Note about copyright - if you take from the web, please credit your source and post a link to the image rather taking a screen grab and uploading it. If you want to upload an image into the thread, then there are some great sites out there like pixabay who have beautiful free images - you just need to credit the image holder if required (it tells you by the picture if this is required or not)

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Congratulations Sarah-Jane! I know your involvement/oversight of the Art Boards will bring the word and image ever-closer together. Blend away! (I think of it as being more a laboratory that workshop :))

And thanks for doing it!

Jim

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Excellent.

Nemo

Congratulations, Sarah-Jane

Good news! I might get back with it at the Sphere!
Congrats, Sarah-Jane!

Thank you so much, Jim, Nemo, John and Rick.

John, I love the idea of the laboratory - that's inspired!

Rick, if you post any of your work I think that it'd be brilliant to discuss it - I love how the images in Hunke work with the text - it feels like more than illustration, more a symbiosis of different kinds of storytelling that complement each other, maybe.

Sarah-Jane

Congratulations, Sarah-Jane. I might peep in from time to time.

Cheers

David

Thanks David - and yay - it would be brilliant if you did : )

Sarah-Jane

Congrats, and welcome to the team!

way to go!!

Hi Sarah-Jane.

Sorry for being late to this lovely party... but, as some of my friends here know, from Facebook, my right arm is encased in plaster from my knuckles to my armpit! Typing with just the index finger of my left hand is laborious and leads to lots of mistakes that need correcting. (I had a fluke accident at home at the weekend, and now have to have an operation to screw my elbow back together.)

It's wonderful to have you on board - yay! There's no one better fitted than you to moderate the Art board, with your expertise and enthusiasm. I look forward to seeing much more activity there from now on.

Jayne

Thank you so much E.Shaun Russell, and Cam and Jayne and Mark!
(also apologies for my lateness but it's been a long day at work)

Jayne - oh no! you poor thing! That sounds painful and inconvenient and I send you all my very, very good wishes for a speedy recovery. I promise I will do my very best to bring enthusiasm to the art forums (without annoying anyone and being properly mindful of the valid argument that poetry can work better without images)

Mark - that is a very cool song. Thank you.

Take care all! I notice that Jim has posted something so I am going to hot-foot it over now and look at it (it's a video too, which is even more exciting).

Sarah-Jane

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Rick, if you post any of your work I think that it'd be brilliant to discuss it - I love how the images in Hunke work with the text - it feels like more than illustration, more a symbiosis of different kinds of storytelling that complement each other...

I felt the same way when I read Rick's Hunke!

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Nice to hear, and congrats! Hope you have a great time of it!

Thank you so much Seree,

I don't know why, but your poems always make me think that you're an artist too, and I hope, if you are, you consider posting some of your work in the art forum. I'd love to see it!

Sarah-Jane