Shakespeare Week: Call for Proposals

In partnership with Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford upon Avon, Warwickshire libraries would like to commission two new performances inspired by Shakespeare (one for adults and one for children) to take place in Warwickshire libraries in 2014. 

Deadline for submissions: Friday 8th November 2013. 

For more information, see https://www.dropbox.com/sh/mx3791u2rygbim3/AFn_OUf0L3.

You can find out more about Shakespeare Week here.

Get on air with Verb New Voices - call for poets!

Do you have something to say? Can you say it in verse – blank or free? Verb New Voices is looking for three talented artists (two between 18-30 and one of any age) from the north of England to create and perform a piece of new work for The Verb on Radio 3. The project – created by Arts Council England and supported by the BBC and organisations across the North, including New Writing North – aims to generate vibrant new writing that reflects something unique about Northern culture.

All you have to do to apply is write a statement of why you want to take part in the project, a professional biography and an outline of the piece you want to perform. Then record yourself – a mobile phone video uploaded to Youtube or Vimeo is fine – performing any piece of work (it doesn’t have to be the piece you want to develop).

Selected artists will receive a bursary of £2,500 and a package of in-kind support that includes professional development, working with voice coaches and a fully-funded place on an Arvon residential creative writing course. Deadline for entries: Friday 13th December 2013. 

To find out more or to enter, click here.

London & Oxford Launches Micheal O’Siadhail’s Collected Poems

Collected Poems is a substantial retrospective covering almost 40 years of work. It draws on thirteen books of poetry by Micheal O’Siadhail, and includes a CD of him reading a selection of the poems.

In his foreword, Micheal O’Siadhail writes about the individual books that make up his Collected, drawing out common themes and relating the books to the various stages in his life at which they were written.
“Collected poems are a kind of retrospective symphony. There was no grand plan. Different phases of growth, the various exigencies in the theatre of living call up the movements.” - Micheal O’Siadhail, Foreword to his Collected Poem.
 
Micheal O’Siadhail is one of Ireland’s leading poets. Formerly a lecturer at Trinity College Dublin and a professor at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, he has been a full-time writer since 1987. He has published thirteen books of poetry, the last nine from Bloodaxe, including Hail! Madam Jazz: New and Selected Poems (1992), Our Double Time (1998), Poems 1975-1995 (1999), The Gossamer Wall: poems in witness to the Holocaust (2002), Love Life (2005), Globe (2007) and Tongues (2010). He won the Marten Toonder Prize for Literature in 1998. He has given poetry readings and broadcast extensively in Ireland, Britain, continental Europe, North America and Japan. He lives in Dublin.

Collected Poems by Micheal O’Siadhail is published by Bloodaxe Books, price £20 (paper) and £30 (cased). With free audio CD of poems read by Micheal O'Siadhail.

For further information on Micheal O’Siadhail, please visit http://osiadhail.com/

At the Poetry Cafe Event - Over the Rainbow

Benjamin Myers wins Gordon Burn Prize

Benjamin Myers
 was named winner of the inaugural Gordon Burn Prize for his book Pig Iron (Bluemoose Books) at a special event at Durham Book Festival last night Saturday 19th October. Durham-born Myers will receive a £5,000 award and the opportunity to undertake a three-month writing retreat at Burn’s cottage in Berwickshire.

 

There was strong competition for the award this year, with an impressive shortlist of unusual, challenging work. However, the judging panel, comprising novelist David Peace, journalist Deborah Orr, and broadcaster and author Mark Lawson, picked Myers as the author who best represented the fearless, interrogative spirit of Burn’s writing.

Judge Deborah Orr said: “In Pig Iron, Benjamin Myers’s most recent novel, I think we have alighted on a work that captures the spirit of the Gordon Burn Prize perfectly. Which is good. This being the inaugural award, it was very important for us to start as we mean to go on.

In Pig Iron, Myers’ protagonist, the traveller, John-John, tries to escape the brutal legacy of his bare-knuckle fighting father by abandoning the travelling way of life. His new job as an ice cream man and settled life on the edge of a Northern town are meant to offer him freedom. Instead he finds prejudice, parole officers and local gangs.

The Gordon Burn Prize, run in partnership by New Writing North, Faber and Faber, and the Gordon Burn Trust, was conceived to pay tribute to the literary legacy of the late author. An incisive, undaunted writer, Newcastle-born Burn was a literary polymath, writing widely and well on a range of subjects from George Best to Peter Sutcliffe. The Gordon Burn Prize seeks to recognise writers whose work follows in his footsteps: authors whose novels enter history to interrogate the past, and non-fiction writers brave enough to recast characters to create a new and vivid reality.

For more information about Gordon Burn, please visit www.gordonburntrust.com.

For more information about Benjamin Myers, please visit www.benmyers.com

Source: New Writing North Press Release

New Poetry Review Out Now!

The Poetry Society's latest edition of Poetry Review, edited by Maurice Riordan, explores Seamus Heaney's idea of the omphalos, a place that is central to a poet's imaginative world, in essays by Colette Bryce and Ian Duhig. In 'Face to Face' Patrick Crotty offers an in-depth interview with Michael Longley, and Richard Gwyn writes on Cavafy. New poems by Matthew Dickman, Hugo Williams, Ruby Robinson, Leontia Flynn, Matthew Sweeney, Eve Grubin, Kate Potts, and many, many more. The issue includes a warm tribute to Seamus Heaney.

Edited by Maurice Riordan, the latest issue of Poetry Review explores Seamus Heaney's idea of the omphalos, a place that is central to a poet's imaginative world, in essays by Colette Bryce and Ian Duhig. In 'Face to Face' Patrick Crotty offers an in-depth interview with Michael Longley, and Richard Gwyn writes on Cavafy. New poems by Matthew Dickman, Hugo Williams, Ruby Robinson, Leontia Flynn, Matthew Sweeney, Eve Grubin, Kate Potts, and many, many more. The issue includes a warm tribute to Seamus Heaney, who died on 30 August. Full contents list and downloadable pdfs here.

Itchy Fingers Textiles Annual Exhibition titled 'Narrative Threads'

Itchy Fingers Textiles will be holding their next exciting exhibition of work at Swansea Grand Theatre from Tuesday 22nd October to 8th November. There will be a wide variety of textile pieces including 3D items on view. 

Itchy Fingers Textiles have confirmed that 3 pieces have been inspired by poetry - 'If', 'When I am Old' and 'Cento' - 'Cento' by Alison Chisholm was commissioned by the BBC in December 2012. Artist Lesley Thomas has created amazing pieces of art based on Alison's piece of work.

This year Itchy Fingers Textiles installation piece will be a diverse selection of covered books which will be sold in support of Penplas Family Centre Reading Scheme. 

Itchy Fingers Textiles hope to have images of all 84 pieces on their website, www.itchyfingersart.webs.com from the 24th October onwards.