Third Blogbirthday and a Little History

Fellow blogger Martin (Square Sunshine) celebrated three years in the blogosphere yesterday; which got me wondering how old was my blog?

Well I checked and would you believe we both started in the same month (though I didn’t start reading his blog until a year or so later). I put up my first blog post on the 9th July 2009.

Here is the link to the first post. I had three comments from Paul Squires, Brad Frederikson (Maekitso’s Cafe) and 47whitebuffalo (Eva) . You’ll notice the dates for the comments are after the post dates (so originally no one commented on my first post – they stopped by later).

The wonderful poet Paul Squires of blog Gingatao has since passed away; but Brad and Eva are still alive and blogging ferociously.

I’ll tell you a little of why I started blogging.

I was googling information on the poetry scene in Australia and came across the Speedpoets website.

Now, Graham Nunn is a founding member of Speedpoets and so I emailed him to see if I could get on the mailing list (even though I didn’t live in Brisbane any longer and would find it hard to get to any events). He kindly assured me this was not a problem. He also told me about his blog Another Lost Shark.

Graham blogs about all things poetry, including his own wonderful poems, but is also a huge Bob Dylan fan (and shares his birthday with the great man) – so following his blog was a no-brainer.

I noticed some very interesting comments on Another Lost Shark from poets. One poet stood out particularly – the inimitable Paul Squires of Puzzle Box infamy – if you remember his comments you will know what I mean

So I just had to pop over to Squires blog Gingatao. The first post I read was Squires rambling on about the huge pink snail in the world of Dr Doolittle – haha! He had so many followers – articulate and fascinating group of artists, poets, photographers; from all around the world – some spoke English as a second language. I was amazed and immediately fell into the devious Gingatao honey pot trap (by commenting )

Most of his posts were his own poetry – a very unique style with e e cummings overtones. I reviewed his first book of poetry ‘The Puzzle Box’ and here is an extract:

‘He has built up a loyal fan-base for his original portrayals of colourful characters and his multi-layered, intertwining narratives, with a great many references to jazz music, piano and past and present cultural allusions.’

The full review can be found here.

Commenting on Gingatao (as many of us found out) is like being sucked into a space time vortex.

Squires soon wanted to know where was my blog? You may have noticed that most people who comment on blogs have there own blogs. This is a strange phenomenon (maybe not that strange if you delve into the psychology of it – but this is neither the time nor the place for such trivialities ) but tending towards being true.

So what was I to do!

Obviously had to start my own blog – haha – and so I quickly dove into the clear blue waters of the WordPress blogging world (very easy to use and highly recommended, unlike some google products which spring to mind ).

Three years blogging and much fun had (and many ups and downs for all of us bloggers)!

Now for some cake!

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ps. thanks Paul, Brad, Eva and Graham for taking the breaks off the roller coast carriage!