Commercial: Crapbot

Not doing the London to Brighton cycle ride tomorrow? You can still get stuck in. Writes John Vinton:

Nine of us are cycling to Brighton on Sunday to raise money for The British Heart Foundation.

To make it more interesting, you can tweet messages to us on the way (just include #aiscycling in your tweet). We’ll jump off our bikes and chalk them on the road. And take pictures. It’s called Crapbot. A bit like Nike Chalkbot. But rubbish.

Go to Crapbot to find out more.

Writing messages on the road is a Tour de France tradition. The messages are normally inspiring. But yours can be humiliating if you prefer. More importantly, you can also donate a few quid if you like.

Commercial: Novelty ties wanted

No, seriously, I do. Or rather, Adele, one of my colleagues at AIS, who writes:

Anyone got a novelty tie they’d be willing to donate to me?

It’s for my Dad’s wedding – he wanted to wear a novelty tie for it. His fiancé couldn’t persuade him out of it, so she entrusted me to step in and have a long chat with him about the perils of wearing a novelty tie and talk him out of it. I succeeded. She is happy.

In the nicest possible way, I now plan to ruin this happiness by getting all the wedding guests to don novelty ties. Except I don’t have any novelty ties. Nor do I have access to a wedding list so that I can ask said wedding guests to bring their own novelty ties. Which means I need to find about 100 novelty ties myself so I can secretly give them to people at the wedding.

Gentlemen, I know you can help. We all have something lying around that was a ill-advised purchase, or never-worn gift. And ladies, I know there's a tie that you hate him wearing, and would secretly like to get rid of. Now's your chance. Consider this a bad tie amnesty.

Send your ties to me or Adele care of AIS by Wednesday 5 July, or if you're in London town, swing by and drop it off. I would say there's some reward at the end of it, but other than making your wardrobe a better place, I'm not sure there is. But isn't that sufficient?

Commercial: Sonnet workshop with Katy Evans-Bush

Quick! Quick! The esteemed Katy Evans-Bush, she of Baroque in Hackney fame, is hosting a workshop on sonnets at the Poetry School on Saturday 25 June. She writes:

How stretchy is a sonnet? For 700 years poets have been reshaping this form to fit their needs, and in its many shapes it is still recognisably a sonnet. This workshop will look at traditional, contemporary and experimental sonnets to see what makes a sonnet a sonnet, and what its possibilities are for poets now. Can we make it new? Do we need to?

There will be reading, discussion and some writing - so you should go home with something to develop. You can benefit from this course whatever stage your poetry is at, if you are comfortable with the basics, have written sonnets and want to learn more about how to make the sonnet your own.

Now, I love a sonnet, so I'll be there. I trust you will be too. Drop Katy a line for more info.

Poetry: 30 days in June

Um, looks like I've committed myself to doing this again. Uh-oh.

Follow my progress here.