Fenland Poet Laureate Competition Now Open!

Could you write a poem for Fenland?

Do you live, work or study in the Fens? Are you inspired by the bleak and beautiful landscapes and unique social history of this fantastic area? Could you be the next Poet Laureate for Fenland?

ADeC and Atelier East, working in partnership with Fen Speak and the Wisbech & Fenland Museum, are proud to announce the Fenland Poet Laureate poetry competition for 2014!

This is a chance for all writers from across the Fens to come together and share their poetry and help put Fenland on the creative map!

"The award has opened so many doors for me, and allowed me to provide opportunities for many more Fenland Poets. It's been a fantastic experience!" -- Leanne Moden, Fenland Poet Laureate 2013.

And best of all, it's free to enter the competition!

The Fenland Poet Laureate Judges are looking for poems that represent and relate to theme 'Fenland'. You can interpret the theme in any way you choose, and the team are really looking forward to reading your entries!

Winning the title of Fenland Poet Laureate is a great recognition of talent, as well as a fantastic opportunity to engage with your local community. The Laureate will be able to write about local events throughout the year and present poems for special occasions, working with others to develop ideas for bringing poetry to Fenland.

Awards:

• First, second and third places will be awarded to three of the poets in the adult (17+) category. 

• Commendations will be awarded to young poets (10-16) for entries, which the judges feel have particular merit. 

• Certificates of achievement will be given to all short-listed and commended entrants. 

• All short-listed and commended poets will be invited to the special Fenland Poet Laureate Awards evening on Wednesday 19th March at the Wisbech and Fenland Museum.

Deadlines for entry: 5pm on Friday 31st January 2014.

Conditions of Entry:

• Your poem should be no longer than 40 lines, and should be typed on a singleside of A4 paper. 
• Please write your age in the top right-hand corner of the page, but please do not write your name on your poem, as all poems will be judged anonymously. 
• All entrants must live, work, or study in the Fens. 
• We can only accept one poem per entrant, and this poem must be previously unpublished.

So, if you live, work, or study in the Fens, the Fenland Poet Laureate team would love to hear from you! Please send your poem, along with a cover sheet with your name, email address, telephone number, address, age group entered (16 & under, or 17+) and the title of the poem to:
Fenland Poet Laureate Competition
Babylon Gallery
Waterside
Ely, CB7 4AU

Alternatively, you can pick up an entry form from your local library. For further details, email info@adec.org.uk.

New Open Mic Night 'Fen Speak' starts in October with Venues in Ely and Wisbech

In association with the Fenland Poet Laureate Programme and Atelier East, and with support from ADeC, Elaine Ewart and Leanne Moden are starting up a brand new open mic poetry evening in North and East Cambridgeshire.

Fen Speak is a free spoken word open mic night designed to support and nurture local poets and writers, and help them develop their performance skills. It's a friendly and supportive space for people to read their poetry out loud, and Elaine and Leanne will be encouraging writers of all ages and abilities to have a go at performing their poetry!

Fen Speak events will be held every third Wednesday of the month, alternating between venues in Ely and Wisbech, and the first open mic night will be on Wednesday 16th October at the Babylon Gallery, Waterside, Ely CB7 4AU -meeting at 7:30pm for an 8pm start. There will be refreshments available, and there's absolutely not obligation to performance, so if anyone wants to come along to listen, that's absolutely fine. Elaine and Leanne hope to see you there!

A Poet Turned Publisher: Guest Blog by Elaine Ewart

They’d arrived. I felt a thrill of excitement as the man at the printers’ slit open the box so I could see the books. And wow. Dafila Scott’s beautiful pastel drawing and Karen Harvey’s eye-catching cover design drew the eye. I pulled a copy out, opened it, had a sniff (doesn’t everyone?) of the freshly printed pages and pored over the text. I was too excited to take it in but the page numbers looked ok, they’d printed the right version, the text was aligned well on the page. It looked like a proper book. Short, yes. Only thirty pages: but thirty smart, professional pages, worthy of the poetic talents of our fifteen contributing poets. Words for Wide Skies: A Poetry Anthology. And I’d published it myself.

I’d deliberately chosen not to go down the route of print on demand companies on the internet. These websites will enable you to publish your book at a low financial risk, which can be helpful for a niche market. However, on closer inspection, the unit cost is typically high. Plus, you don’t have the benefit of physical copies to put in a shop, and you have limited control over the design. Hmm, not for me, I thought.

Instead, I’d gone to a local printers, who had given me a very reasonable quote, and said, ‘This is what I want; here is the text layout, and this is the cover,’ and they’d done it.  

It really was as simple as that.

That’s not to say it was not a lot of hard work. Since initially discussing the idea of a nature poetry anthology with the staff at the Wildfowl and Wetland Trust at Welney and my fellow editor Karen Harvey, a vast amount of work has been done: preparing a timetable, applying for funding, making a call for submissions and publicizing it, arranging the launch, selecting the poems, replying to everyone – and now the copies were here (phew!) sending out press releases, arranging reviews, logistics… All sorts of things.

But the point is, although it is hard work, it is not magic. If you’re willing to put that work in, are fanatically stubborn and eye-wateringly pedantic over proofs and will hover over your pet project like anxious mother hen because you love poetry and poets and, (good though blogs are) really, really, love a nice poetry book as a beautiful physical object, then you can make it happen.

And, importantly, it will happen with a very small initial investment which will enable copies to be sold at an attractive price. Five pounds was my target sale price – high enough for a decent profit for WWT Welney, to raise funds for their conservation work, but low enough for people visiting the reserve to say, well, why not?  Why not buy a nice book of poems?

Why not indeed.

© Elaine Ewart, 2013

Elaine Ewart is a poet and former Fenland Poet Laureate.  She blogs at flightfeather.wordpress.com  

Words for Wide Skies, a nature poetry anthology with a Fenland theme, edited and published by Elaine Ewart, is being launched at the WWT Welney reserve on Friday 21st June and will be available from WWT Welney from that date, price £5.  All profits go to the conservation work at WWT Welney.  For further details, contact WWT Welney by telephone 01353 860711 or by e-mail: info.welney@wwt.org.uk

PRESS RELEASE – YOUNG PEOPLE’S MUSEUM BOOKLET PROJECT

ART AND HISTORY COLLIDE AT THE WISBECH AND FENLAND MUSEUM

To launch the call for submissions for their latest project, the Young Curators’ Forum is proud to present a free creative workshop with Fenland Poet Laureate Leanne Moden and Lead Young Curator Brandon Mattless.

The project has been made possible with support from local arts organisation Atelier East and the Cambridgeshire based charity, Young Lives.

The workshop is suitable for adults and children over 11, and participants will be invited to use museum artifacts as a creative springboard, writing short stories, drawing pictures and composing poems based on their response to the objects and displays.

Leanne and Brandon will lead a series of activities designed to help get the creativity flowing, and there’ll also be plenty of time to look around the museum for inspiration.

The workshop runs from 10:00am to 12:00pm on Saturday 11th May at the Wisbech and Fenland Museum, Museum Square, Wisbech. Participation is free, but places are allocated on a first come, first serve basis, so please call the museum on 01945 583817, or email info@karen-harvey.co.uk to book your place.

The Young Curator’s Forum will also be putting together a booklet of creative work celebrating the Wisbech and Fenland Museum, and they’d like to hear from you.

Submissions can be in the form of poems, short stories or drawings, but all must be based on or inspired by the collections at the Wisbech and Fenland Museum. Adults and children of all ages are welcome to enter. Please send your submission to infor@karen-harvey.co.uk with your name, contact telephone number, and the name of the museum artifact that inspired you. The closing date for submissions is Friday 31st May 2013.

Guest Blog from Leanne Moden, Fenland Poet Laureate 2013

Performance Anxiety

If I could travel back in time and speak to my sixteen-year-old self, no doubt she would be horrified to learn that I perform poetry. In front of other people! On stage! Out loud!

I can see her blushing beetroot-red at the very thought of it.

Like many people, I spent much of my life as a closet poet. I wrote poetry and read poetry and enjoyed watching people perform their own poetry at events. But there was no way I was going to expose my poetry to the light of day. The closest I came to that was the work-shopping sessions in my creative writing group at university. Each Wednesday morning I would walk to class, dizzy with anticipation, knowing that we would be discussing one of my poems. And the thought of reading my work aloud? It made me feel physically sick.

So what changed?

Well, for me, it was a combination of several things: my nan died, I spent a bit of time out of work, and I moved away from home, all within the space of a year or so. This upheaval in my personal life gave me the shot in the arm that I so desperately needed. I decide that if I wanted to have a fulfilling life, I would need to go out and embrace every opportunity.

So I did.

When I was offered a five-minute open mic slot at a poetry cabaret night in Norwich in 2010, I jumped at the chance, even though the thought of getting up in front of people still terrified me. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, as they say.

As I read my first poem, I felt so nauseous that I genuinely thought I was going to be sick on my shoes! Perhaps, if that had happened, I could have explained it away as performance art? Who knows.

I've now been performing for two years. I've worked with some incredible people and done some amazing things. I've recited poems in the back rooms of pubs, performed in tents at festivals, and competed in a poetry slam on stage at the Roundhouse in Camden. I worked alongside the likes of Steve Larkin, Richard Tyrone Jones, Hollie McNish, Fay Roberts, Young Dawkins, Mark Niel, and the actor Miriam Margolyes. I've collaborated with some very talented people, worked on fantastic projects, and made some wonderful new friends.

But I still get nervous before every performance.

This year, as Fenland Poet Laureate, I'm hoping to give other closet poets the opportunity to engage more actively with poetry, through a series of local workshops and events. I want to spread my own enthusiasm for poetry and foster a supportive environment in which local people can experiment with poetry. I really believe that poetry should be accessible to everyone, regardless of their background, education or level of confidence. With the support of Karen Harvey at Atelier East, Poet Laureate Emeritus Elaine Ewart, and David Wright at the Wisbech and Fenland Museum, I hope to promote poetry in the Fens and work with other organisations to bring local poetry firmly into the mainstream.

Just as long as my nerves don't get the better of me!

Leanne Moden is the Fenland Poet Laureate 2013.

You can find her on twitter @crimsonebolg and you can check out her blog at www.tenyearstime.blogspot.co.uk

If you would like Leanne to write a poem to celebrate a Fenland community project, or if you are interested in booking her for your own event, please email info@atelier-east.co.uk.

Fenland Poet Laureate Competition Now Open!

Could you write a poem for Fenland?

Are you inspired by Fenland? Could you be the next Poet Laureate for Fenland?

Atelier East, working in partnership with Wisbech & Fenland Museum, are proud to announce the Fenland Poet Laureate Awards 2013. 

This is a chance for all writers from across the Fens to come together and share their poetry and help put Fenland on the map for creative writing!

‘Being Fenland Poet Laureate has been fantastic, and the best year of my life as a writer,’ said Elaine Ewart, Fenland’s current Poet Laureate, and one of the judges of this years competition.

‘Last year the competition was an amazing success and the awards evening was absolutely wonderful, with lots of people coming together to read, share, and enjoy poetry at a really friendly and relaxed event. We’d like to make this year even better and get even more people to come out for poetry in Fenland,’ said Karen Harvey, Director of Atelier East, who is a judge and founded the Awards in 2012.

In 2012 Karen and Atelier East were given a highly acclaimed Clore Poetry and Literature Award for the concept and delivery of the Fenland Poet Laureate, the success of the project was even reported in the Journal of the International Board for Books for Young People.

There are two categories to be entered; a Young Poet Laureate Award for 10-16 year olds, and for those over 17 there is the Fenland Poet Laureate Award. Entry to the competition is completely free, the deadline for entries is February 1st 2013, and there will be a special awards evening at Wisbech & Fenland Museum on Friday 1st March 2013. 
Entry forms are available across Fenland in libraries and museums, or by email from
 info@atelier-east.co.uk