British Summer Time is finally with us and there is much to celebrate, not least the creative success of current students and alumni including previous short course attendees (see below for details of the next round of short courses). There is also the NCLA Festival of Belonging to look forward to with an accompanying fringe festival as well as other forthcoming events including the launch of Chinese poetry anthology Jade Ladder and Martin Figura’s spoken word show ‘Whistle’.
The NCLA Festival of Belonging is a week-long explosion of literary activity taking place from Monday 30th April to Sunday 6th May across Newcastle-Gateshead. It will include literary events, workshops, a fringe festival, an under-19s poetry competition and a special edition of Friction Magazine. The festival is part of the series of events organised to mark the launch of Newcastle University's theme of Social Renewal.
In her introduction to the Festival programme, Jackie Kay writes ‘What makes us who we are and where do we belong are questions we all ask ourselves. Does your identity change when you are forced to move country, or when you choose to leave your homeland? Does your identity change when your accent does?... Can you be simultaneously placed and misplaced?’
The Festival will bring together writers and audiences to explore and reflect on what it means to belong. Poetry and music night organisers, Trashed Organ will curate a fringe festival with top local writers and musicians. Over the bank holiday weekend, alongside film showings and radio broadcasts, NCLA will be welcoming writers from across the globe.
Confirmed participants include the writer Sapphire in conversation with Jackie Kay; 2008 Commonwealth Best First Book Prize winner Tahmima Anam; Somerset Maugham Award winner, and one of Granta’s twenty best young British novelists, Hari Kunzru; Somerset Maugham Award winner, and NCLA Writer in Residence for April and May, Helen Oyeyemi and Gillian Allnutt, whose poetry has twice been shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. Gillian Allnutt and Helen Oyeyemi will also both be running creative writing workshops during the Festival.
Tickets for the bank holiday weekend events are available now from Melanie Birch on 0191 222 7619 or email melanie.birch@ncl.ac.uk. Tickets will also be available online soon at the NCLA website and the Tyneside Cinema Box Office.
Fringe Festival passes (£15/£12 [concessions]), for access to all fringe events, can be purchased from Trashed Organ.
The Under-19s Belonging Poetry Competition has a deadline of Friday 20th July 2012. NCLA is asking children and young adults resident in the North East to consider what it means to belong, to be at home, to be part of a community. Shortlisted poems will be transformed into a poetry trail across Newcastle-Gateshead in autumn 2012. Full details will be coming soon on the NCLA website.
The summer edition of NCLA’s online creative writing journal, Friction Magazine, will be dedicated to the NCLA Festival of Belonging. If you are attending the Festival and are inspired to write, the editors would love to hear from you. The deadline for submissions is Sunday 13th May 2012.
Writers can now find a sociable environment at the Settle Down Café where they can meet and socialise with fellow writers at every stage of development and experience as well as enjoying a comfortable writing environment. Drop-in sessions for this new group take place on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings from 9.30am until 12 noon and Wednesday evening from 5pm to 7pm. Sessions will be both informal and structured, and the newly-established Facebook page is already filling up with comments and ideas.
Following last year’s highly successful collaboration between NLCA and different cultural venues in Newcastle and Gateshead, a second season is already under way with Creative Writing PhD students undertaking short writing residencies across the Newcastle-Gateshead region. Once again the blogs and writing exercises they will create for members of the public will appear on the Write Around The Toon (WATT) website and there will be a launch event at Northern Stage on Thursday 7th June 2012 (more details to follow in a later newsletter). New venues this year include Flow, the new floating art installation on the Tyne, and Live Theatre.
Winning and shortlisted poems in both the North East young adult and main category are now available online to read and enjoy.
The new
season of short courses begins on Thursday 19th April and runs
until Thursday 24th May. All courses take place in the
Percy Building, Newcastle University and include:
Fiction
Masterclass: Planning a Novel: please note that this class runs
from 3pm – 5pm, led by Laura Fish.
The
Longer Poem and the Sequence: 5pm – 7pm led by Sean O’Brien.
Writing
for Children: 5pm – 7pm led by Ann Coburn and Jackie Kay.
Documentary
Film: 5pm – 7pm, led by Tina Gharavi.
All the above courses are currently fully booked but for enquiries about cancellations, please call Melanie Birch on 0191 222 7619 or email melanie.birch@ncl.ac.uk.
On Thursday 19th April at 7pm, Culture Lab, Newcastle University, Jade Ladder, will be launched with two of China’s most prominent poets, Yang Lian and Xi Chuan, joining Yang Lian's co-editor W.N. Herbert and the anthology's main translator, Brian Holton. This anthology of Chinese poetry shows authoritatively for the first time in English the diversity of contemporary Chinese poetry. The event is supported by the British Council as part of the China Market Focus 2012 cultural programme at The London Book Fair.
Tickets
(£6/£4 [concessions]/£2 [Newcastle University students]) are available online
from the
webstore. Alternatively, call Melanie Birch on 0191 222 7619 or email melanie.birch@ncl.ac.uk
On Thursday 26th April (7pm, Culture Lab, Newcastle University), Martin Figura brings his multimedia spoken word show Whistle (shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry 2010) to Newcastle. Martin Figura’s career to date encompasses life as an army major, an accountant and a teacher of poetry, photography and performance to pupils of all ages. Gillian Clarke says, ‘Martin Figura has a rare gift, his photographer’s eye and poet’s ear tell his story with candour, restraint, and perfect detail, showing how art’s restraint and life’s truth can illuminate, uplift and transform.’
Tickets
(£6/£4 [concessions]/£2 [Newcastle University students]) are available online
from the
webstore. Alternatively, call Melanie Birch on 0191 222 7619 or email melanie.birch@ncl.ac.uk
Creative
Writing PhD student Stevie
Ronnie is one of eight poets who have been selected to work with
world-renowned voice coach Kristin
Linklater during a week-long residency at Cove Park. Kristin, who has coached
actors including Donald Sutherland and Sigourney Weaver, will be helping the
poets to explore physically what it means to find a true voice.
NCLA’s Creative Writing Development Officer, Dr Victoria Adams, has just been selected for the World Event Young Artists (WEYA), a new international arts showcase that will launch in Nottingham on 7th September 2012 as a finale to the Cultural Olympiad.
Dr Helen Limon, whose award-winning novel Om Shanti
Babe is soon to be published, has just learned that publishing rights for
her children’s picture book, My Mother is a Troll (Zed Said, 2006), have been bought by the Spanish publisher Milrazon.
Current undergraduates in the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics at Newcastle University are among the enthusiastic editors of the excellent online Alliterati Magazine. They particularly enjoy work that shows collaboration between art forms and the current edition focuses on pieces produced by visual artists and writers from all over the world.
Postgraduate Certificate in Creative Writing student Elaine Ewart, who won second prize in the main category of the Water poetry competition, has won the adult title in the Fenland Poet Laureate competition.
Former
student of English at Newcastle University, Darren Richard Carlaw, is the
editor of StepAway Magazine,
an online publication that specialises in urban flash fiction and poetry. The
magazine includes an open project, Northern Wanderer, about walking in
Newcastle, with an emphasis on the city seen from street level. The editor
urges local writers to submit their work.
Another former English student, James Norton, was involved in the making of The Dreams of William Golding for BBC2, which was broadcast on 17th March 2012.
Creative Writing PhD student Christy Ducker’s poetry
pamphlet Armour
(Smith/Doorstop, 2011) has recently been enthusiastically reviewed in The
Guardian by Paul
Batchelor. He writes: ‘Armour introduces an unusually sociable poetic sensibility, full of warmth but
never sentimental. This is a poet in the swim of life, her eyes wide open for
everyday wonders.’