NCLA is
extending its activities in new directions including the introduction of
Mentoring and Patron schemes and developments to its website. Meanwhile, its
primary role of bringing the best writers to the North East is fulfilled this
month with the opportunity to celebrate Jackie Kay’s new poetry collection Fiere at a literary lunch this week and forthcoming visits from three American
writers: Marilynne Robinson, August Kleinzahler and CK Williams. CK Williams
is making a special trip to the UK to deliver the Poetry Society Annual
Lecture that, for the first time, is being presented in three cities
including Newcastle. As well as purchasing your tickets for these events, you
can also now book a place on the Creative Writing Summer School, which this
year looks to elements of nature and the environment for its theme.
NCLA is delighted to be welcoming widely acclaimed
American writer Marilynne Robinson who has been described by The Guardian as ‘One of America’s greatest contemporary novelists, with a career
characterised by surprise and singularity’. She will be reading from her work
on Friday 20th May at 7pm in the Curtis Auditorium, Herschel
Building, Newcastle University. Earlier in the day she will be talking to
both Creative Writing and Literature PhD students drawing on her life not
only as a writer but also as teacher at the University
of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Writing in the Sunday Times Bryan
Appleyard describes her as ‘the world’s best writer of prose,’.
Marilynne’s novel Housekeeping (1980)
was included in Time’s ‘All Time 100 Novels’ and listed as one
of the 100 greatest novels of all time by The Observer. In 2005 she
received a Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for Gilead (2004), and in 1998 she received a
Mildred and Harold Strauss Living award from the American Academy of Arts and
Letters. Her latest novel, Home (2008), won the 2009 Orange Prize for Fiction.
Tickets
(£6/£4) are available online from the shop.
Alternatively, call Melanie Birch on 0191 222 7619 or email melanie.birch@ncl.ac.uk
NCLA welcomes New Jersey born poet August Kleinzahler on Thursday 12th May, at 7pm, to Culture Lab, Newcastle University. The author of ten books of poetry, Kleinzahler’s ‘reputation rests on his jazzy, formally inventive and energetic poetry…’ according to the Poetry Foundation’s online biography. He won the Griffin International Poetry Prize in 2004 for The Strange Hours Travelers Keep. Here to promote the UK edition of Sleeping it Off in Rapid City: Poems New and Selected (Faber & Faber, 2011), which in the US gained him the National Book Critics Circle Award, this reading is part of a ten event tour of the UK and Ireland made possible by NCLA in association with Faber & Faber and organised by TriplePA. A taste of what’s to come can be heard on the Poetry Archive website.
Tickets
(£6/£4) are available online from the shop.
Alternatively, call Melanie Birch on 0191 222 7619 or email melanie.birch@ncl.ac.uk
This year
NCLA is privileged to be one of the three institutions where CK Williams will
present the Poetry Society Annual Lecture On Being Old. Winner of the
Pulitzer Prize for his collection Repair (1999), he is a prolific
writer, his first volume of poetry, appearing in 1969 on the recommendation
of Anne Sexton. His work has been critically acclaimed: Professor Sean
O’Brien, reviewing Wait (2010) for The Guardian, writes, ‘Sentence
construction, one of the more neglected features of the poetic arsenal, is
Williams's great strength, his Ancient Mariner-like power to claim and hold
the reader's uncomfortable but rewarded assent.’ He adds, ‘His poems
sometimes undertake philosophical inquiries whose effect can be both alarming
and very funny.’
The
Lecture, which takes place at 7pm on Wednesday 25th May in the
Curtis Auditorium, Herschel Building, Newcastle University, is free and not
ticketed. For further information call Melanie Birch on 0191 222 7619 or
email melanie.birch@ncl.ac.uk
One of
NCLA’s aims is to build a community in the North East for those who love the
literary arts and the Patron scheme is designed to encourage that community
development. To reflect NCLA’s growth and development and enable greater
involvement for the community that supports it, the existing NCLA website
will be extended to encompass a wider range of projects including writing by
young people, work in translation (see Professor WN Herbert’s report below)
and output from the recently-concluded Changing Age Programme.
NCLA is
pleased to announce the launch of a scheme for Patrons that provides
an opportunity to have closer involvement with the Centre and receive a
number of exciting benefits in recognition of the support they provide. These
benefits include free attendance at four events in any 12 months, priority
booking, reduced rates for special events (including this month’s literary
lunch with Jackie Kay – see above) and discounts on NCLA publications.
Although the short courses run by NCLA are highly rated
and often oversubscribed we do not always discover the fate of the
novels, poems, scripts, memoirs and blogs that start life during the courses.
A new mentoring scheme allows writers to continue consulting the many experts
in the School of English and will provide invaluable support. Writing is a
lonely task and many writers long for feedback. This represents a tremendous
opportunity for professional dialogue with writers who themselves have
extensive experience. For more details, please see the NCLA website.
I have
just spent a week translating the work of three talented younger Turkish
poets, Efe Duyah, Pelin Özer and Gökҫenaur Ҫ. Working with Richard Gwyn from
the University of Cardiff in the idyllic setting of Gümüşlük
Akademisi, not far from Bodrum, I was under the aegis of Literature Across
Frontiers, an organisation dedicated to literary translation and
particularly to translating poetry from languages other than those of the
main European states and from contemporary poets. The principle of
poet-to-poet translation is one of the most dynamic ways of instituting
worldwide literary networks.
The
School of English Creative Writing Summer School takes place from Monday 27th June – Friday 1st July 2011. The theme this year is Earth, Air,
Fire & Water. Over the five days of creative writing workshops,
participants will visit the Dove Marine Laboratory in Cullercoats, Moorbank
Botanic Garden and the Great North Museum: Hancock, and will explore through
prose, poetry and script how writers can respond to the elements of nature
and the environment.
Tutors
on this year’s Summer School are Laura Fish (prose), Linda France (poetry),
Tina Gharavi (script), WN Herbert (poetry) and Margaret Wilkinson (prose).
Session outlines are available on the NCLA website, which also
provides details on the availability of credits towards a Postgraduate
Certificate in Creative Writing.
The
Summer School fee is £300 (to include refreshments, lunch and evening events
including dinner on Friday night)
To
book a place, or for further information, call Melanie Birch on 0191 222 7619
or email melanie.birch@ncl.ac.uk
To
celebrate the publication of Professor Jackie Kay's new poetry collection, Fiere (Picador 2011), NCLA will be holding a lunch in the John Dobson Room at Jesmond
Dene House, Jesmond Dene Road, Newcastle Upon Tyne, on Thursday 12th May,
12:30 for 1pm.
Jackie
will be reading poems during the lunch and there will the chance to talk with
her about her writing. A 3 course lunch with wine and reading costs £45 (Patrons of NCLA have
priority booking and receive a reduced rate of £25).
Places
for this event are limited. To book, call Melanie Birch on 0191 222 7619 or
email Melanie.Birch@ncl.ac.uk.
At 7pm on
Thursday 9th June Write Around The Toon, the web-based
interactive creative writing tour of Newcastle-Gateshead, launches at
Northern Stage. Help celebrate with a glass of wine and an evening of
readings inspired by the host cultural venues. This event is free.
Whitbread
Poetry Award winning poet and novelist John Burnside and Forward Poetry Prize
and Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year Award winning poet Kathleen Jamie
are reading together at 7pm on Friday 10th June in G5, Percy
Building, Newcastle University. This event is programmed in association with
Newcastle University’s sustainability
research theme and programme.
Tickets
(£6/£4) are available online from the shop.
Alternatively, call Melanie Birch on 0191 222 7619 or email melanie.birch@ncl.ac.uk
Congratulations
go to Creative Writing PhD student Helen Limon whose novel for teenagers, Om
Shanti Babe, has been shortlisted for the Frances
Lincoln Diverse Voices Children’s Book Award 2011 which has a
distinguished Panel of Judges. The winner will receive a prize of £1,500 plus
the option for Janetta Otter-Barry at Frances Lincoln Children’s Books to
publish the novel and will be announced on 23rd June.
Congratulations
also go to PhD Creative Writing student Victoria Adams, who has won the Ncl+ Student Achievement Award (Arts & Culture) for her work in
establishing Write Around The Toon an online, self-guided creative
writing tour of Newcastle-Gateshead. WATT is the result of a series of mini-residencies
by creative writing PhD students from Newcastle and Northumbria Universities
funded by the AHRC and NCLA and will be launching on 9th June at Northern
Stage (see Forthcoming events).
Shelley
Sclater, a former MA student in Creative Writing was shortlisted for the Charles
Pick Fellowship at the University of East Anglia.
Christy Ducker, Creative Writing PhD student, is a winner in this year's Smith/Doorstop Book and Pamphlet Competition. Her poetry pamphlet Armour will be published soon.
Professor Sean O’Brien’s most recent collection, November (Picador, 2011), has already been announced as the spring Poetry Book Society
Choice and has now received excellent reviews in The
Observer, The
Guardian and The
Independent.