Nottingham Festival of Words

Nottingham Festival of Words - February 9th to 24th, 2013

The inaugural Nottingham Festival of Words welcomes all lovers of words to Nottingham. Taking its inspiration from Nottingham's lace industry, the festival will host a diverse range of talks, readings, children's events, panels, discussions, workshops, comedy, poetry and live music, all involving words in one form or another.

BOOKER Prize nominee Alison Moore will be among the guests for the 16-day festival along with Michael Rosen, David Belbin, Alice Oswald, and David Almond plus comedian Al Kennedy.

Festival spokesman Ian Douglas says, "We aim to draw attention to the vibrant and diverse literary culture in the city and its environs and to raise its profile. We want to provide a variety of ways for audiences to discover and engage with literature in a live context." He adds: "We are keen to build bridges through Nottingham's literary history, taking guests on a journey from Lord Byron through to the present day, via the likes of DH Lawrence and Alan Sillitoe."

Events will be held at the Newton Arkwright Building of Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham Playhouse, Broadway Cinema and Newstead Abbey.

"Our own literary festival is long over-due," says David Belbin, adding, "Nottingham has a very talented array of writers with an astonishing range of work. It will be good to see them showcased alongside international names."

The festival’s Writer in Residence is Deborah Tyler-Bennett. In addition to her poetry collections Deborah co-wrote the V&A Museum creative writing web package, and is also the editor of Coffee House, a small poetry press magazine. 

The festival is also to have its own Artist in Residence, Sue Bulmer, for the main festival weekend. These main events will take place on the weekend of February 16 and 17, alongside the Lace Season and Light Night.

Festival highlights include:

Alice Oswald and Michael Rosen: On Friday 15^th and Saturday 16^th of February, the Djanogly Theatre at the Lakeside Arts Centre will be hosting the poets Alice Oswald and Michael Rosen.
Alice will be performing her most recent work, Memorial; a modern recreation of Homer’s Iliad. Her performance of Memorial is dramatic and moving and is absolutely unlike any other poetry reading you will see. This event is on Friday February 15^th at 7.30 pm. Suitable for 14 years +, tickets £10 (£7 concessions)
On Sunday February 17^th at 1.30pm and 3.30pm Michael will be performing ‘Favourite Stories and Poems’, his non-stop one-man show of poems, stories, songs and jokes. It’s his first visit to Nottingham sharing old favourites like Chocolate Cake and We’re Going on a Bear Hunt along with newer stories from Even My Ears Are Smiling and Michael Rosen’s Big Book of Bad Things. Tickets are £6.50, suitable for families and children age 4+.

For full details of the events see the Lakeside Arts Centre website: www.lakesidearts.org.uk.

To book call the Lakeside Box Office on 0115 846 7777

Newstead Abbey will be filled with the sound of spoken word on Saturday 9th February with a host of poetry and spoken word events. It all starts with free entry into the gardens and free afternoon events including prizewinning poets CJ Allen and Adrian Buckner reading and talking about their recent work, a spoken word performance from Dori K, and Jonathan Taylor’s launch of his poetry collection ‘Musicolepsy’. And while you take in the inspiring scenery and architecture, costumed poets will be performing works to keep the words flowing.

Nottingham Festival of Words continues into the evening with two fantastic ticketed events: Poetry, Landscape and Radicals and Something in the Shadows. You can now buy tickets for both events via Experience Nottinghamshire.

Lord Byron: The First Rockstar?
Saturday 9th February 2013 at Newstead Abbey. 5.40pm
Mad, bad and dangerous to know, Lord Byron rocketed to fame after the publication of his poem 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage'. He made his maiden speech in the House of Lords about the Nottingham Luddites, and embarked on a life of sex, drugs and rock n' roll. Hear all about it at the poet's ancestral home, where he lived, wrote and partied...

Twitter Novel: Join the collaborative twitter novel and help shape the narrative. A dual story set in Victorian times and the present day. A Victorian lace worker finds love in a dark place, while in modern times a cross-cultural relationship enters forbidden territory. Help spin out these stories of love and lace. Details here.

Paul Anderson will be showing what the World Wide Web might actually look like. Visit his blog at

http://techlun.ch/

Nottingham Lace Competition: Children are encouraged to write about Nottingham's lace industry for a competition, with book tokens and publication in the Festival anthology as prizes. In Memory of Dorothy Bell, the Nottingham Lace Competition is open to anyone aged 18 or under and living in Nottingham.
There are three age groups (under 10, 11–14, and 15–18), and you can enter eithera poem or a short story on the theme of lace.
Make lace. Wear Lace. Love lace. Lace words together. What does lace mean to you?

To enter the competition, download your form:
For a .doc version click here
For a pdf version click here.
Your poem or story mustn't be longer than one page on 12-point font size.
Send the form with your piece of writing by 24th February 2013.

You can email it to lace@nottwords.org.uk or post it to:
Nottingham Lace Competition
Nottingham Writers' Studio
32a Stoney Street
Nottingham
NG1 1LL

Children’s Writers:
Renowned author David Almond will talk about his fiction. David has penned many much-loved books over the years including Skellig, turned into a TV drama, Kit’s Wilderness and Clay.

Over at the Newton Building keep an eye out for Vikings and Victorians as the Nottingham History Roadshow pitches up. There will be a lively mix of quizzes, readings and slideshows. But be warned, this is not for the fainthearted as the Roadshow covers everything from burning castles to explosive diarrhoea!

Ever been on a story walk? Did you know there are secrets hidden in the nooks and crannies of Nottingham? Amanda Smith will guide you, taking parties of children on imaginative excursions around the capital.

Little Gem Storytelling will be taking us all the way to Scallywag. Local storyteller Pete Davis will also be thrill audiences and self-published author Robb Hann will lead an event around his beautifully illustrated book The GrumbleGroar (winner of New Writer’s UK Children’s Book of the Year 2012). Older children might also enjoy the workshop on writing graphic comics. And look out for Riddle Me This, A Way with Words and the Poet Trees.

Libraries and schools are also involved. For example the Central Library will be hosting a Revolutionary Cookbook for children. Watch, listen and taste! And at historic Wollaton Hall there’s a whole day of storytelling and children’s activities under the banner A Way With Words.

Keep an eye on www.nottwords.org.uk for programme information.

Follow Notts Words on Facebook or Twitter or sign up for the newsletter – visit: http://nottwords.org.uk/

Nottingham Festival of Words is a collaborative effort, organised by Nottingham Writers’ Studio, Writing East Midlands, and Nottingham City Council in partnership with Nottingham Trent University and the University of Nottingham.

 

Alan Sillitoe Poetry Comp

Poetry competition – big name adjudicator – £200 first prize

After the massive success of last year’s inaugural Alan Sillitoe Memorial Open Poetry Competition – adjudicated by Ruth Fainlight and paying out £350 in prize money – they’re doing the same again this year. George Szirtes – winner of the 2005 T.S. Eliot Prize – will be the final adjudicator.

The competition is open to everyone except members of the Alan Sillitoe Committee and their families. Theme and form are open. The only stipulations we make are that your poem should be no more than 40 lines, previously unpublished, not submitted for publication elsewhere and not entered for, or placed in, any other competition.

First prize: £200. Second: £100. Third: £50.

Entry fees? £3 per poem or four for £10.

How many poems can you enter? Well, as long as you’re paying £10 per multiple of four, they really don’t mind.

All proceeds will go to the Alan Sillitoe Memorial Fund. The deadline is Tuesday 22nd January 2013.

Click here for the 2nd Alan Sillitoe Memorial Poetry Competition flyer; please read the guidelines on this document before entering.

Postal entries should be sent to: The Competition Secretary, 38 Harrow Road, West Bridgford, Nottingham NG2 7DU. Cheques or postals should be made payable to ‘The Alan Sillitoe Committee’.

Or you can enter by email, sending your poems as attachments to alansillitoepage@hotmail.co.uk and paying your entry fee via the “donate” button on this website. You should make a note of the PayPal reference number and quote it in your email.

Good luck!

Beeston Poets

Beeston Poets were visited by Neil Astley. Fresh from the Nottingham Open poetry competition adjudication, Neil (who founded Bloodaxe Books in 1978) read from Essential Poems from the Staying Alive Trilogy to an audience of nearly 60 people. The Five Leaves elf's favourite was Edip Cansever's "Table", which is available online, unlike most of the poems in Essential Poems and the trilogy (so go and buy them... or at the very least get hold of Essential Poems, it's a fantastic and accessible introduction to contemporary world poetry).

Neil also spoke about the philosophy behind Bloodaxe, and his own personal mission to bring a wider range of poetry to a UK audience. He suggested that much of the poetry published in the UK is written by white middle-class English men (or white working-class Irish men, or white middle-class Scotsmen... you get the idea). So Bloodaxe has made a point of publishing contemporary poetry from a wide range of men and women of all races and from all parts of the world, and Staying Alive, Being Alive and Being Human are exemplars of that philosophy. "Hoorah for Bloodaxe!" says the Five Leaves elf.

After the break, Neil treated us to a couple of poems from local success story Candlestick Press's pamphlet Ten Poems About Sheep, which he edited for them.

Andy Croft, December 8th

Andy will read from 1948, a comic novel written in Pushkin sonnets, set during the post-War London Olympics and illustrated by Martin Rowson. Starring Russian spies, London gangsters and useless poets, 1948 is part Cold War film noir and part Ealing comedy, and it was recently Nicholas Lezard’s Paperback of the Week in The Guardian. Andy will also read from his other poetry collections.

The Five Leaves elf has pulled out all the stops, and organised a slide show featuring Martin Rowson's cartoons which were drawn especially for 1948. Like Andy's reading, these will entertain and enlighten you, and are virtually guaranteed to make you laugh.

 

Andy Croft is a brilliant and hyperactive writer, who was Poet-in-Residence on the Great North Run, translates Siberian poets, works with prisoners, and has given readings all over the world including in the USA, France and Russia. He has written five novels and forty-two books for teenagers, mostly about football. He has edited several anthologies of poetry; and his own collections include two novels in Pushkin sonnets, Ghost Writer and 1948. He runs Smokestack Books, which publishes unconventional and radical poetry both from English-speaking poets and in translation.

For more information on Beeston Poets and their events please visit http://beestonpoets.wordpress.com/

John Harvey guest judge in EMBA

The Submission Deadline for the 2013 East Midlands Book Award is Sat 1st December 2012.

The aim of the award is: ‘to promote writers who live in the East Midlands, to raise the profile of the thriving literary scene in the region, and to reward exceptional work.’

This year’s guest judge is none other than John Harvey.

Please click HERE to read the rules and how to enter.

Review: Word of Mouth

Read the LEFT LION review of the recent Word of Mouth event at Antenna by clicking the link below.

REVIEW

Book Day in Arnold, Sat Dec 1st

Book Day at Gedling Civic Centre, THIS Saturday, Dec 1^st, between 10am and 4pm.

This free to attend event features talks, readings, a book launch, ‘meet the author’ stalls, refreshments, and a workshop from a local publisher.

There’s no booking required, simply turn up at any point during the day. The short talks are suitable for all lovers of literature. Topics range from The Women’s Land Army to Creating A Free Website and include Where Ideas Come From, Creating Characters, Hard-Boiled Fiction, Self Publishing and Tracing Our Languages Back In Time.

Gedling Civic Centre is in the grounds of Arnot Park, Arnold, Nottingham, NG5 6LU. Parking is available within the park.

Everyone is welcome at this event hosted by members of New Writers UK

Word of Mouth: Journeys

Word of Mouth: Journeys

Wed 21 November

7.30pm

Antenna cafe-restaurant

9a Beck Street, NG1 1EQ (how to find Antenna)

Tickets and Boarding Passes: £4/£3 (NWS members & concessions)

Word of Mouth is back on 21 November for a third month running with a night of journeys and freedom, hosted by three-time novelist Megan Taylor.

Escape a cold November night for an evening of spoken word wanderings with readings that range across Europe, Russia, and Nepal, before returning home to our very own Notts. More adventurous than a city break, more daring than a package holiday, this is writing that flies in the face of repression and off into an uncertain future.

Poetry by Richard Goodson, Andy Miller and Robin Vaughan-Williams

Prose from Giselle Leeb, Andrew Kells, Laura Grevel and Alison Moore

Wayne Burrows on PEN International's reaction to the Pussy Riot convictions, and Arthur Seaton's own unique response via James Walker.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/128897860595996/