This edition of the newsletter highlights the exciting array of events, readings, discussions, film screenings and workshops at the forthcoming NCLA Festival of Belonging along with the Festival of Belonging Fringe programme, which brings together some of the North East’s most inspiring writers, musicians and artists in the run up to the main Festival. There is also news of two associated competitions plus some staff, student and alumni successes.
Beginning on Friday 4th May with Sapphire’s first visit to Newcastle, the NCLA Festival of Belonging is a weekend packed with world-class events. A Weekend Ticket for entry to all of the Festival’s readings, screenings and discussions from Friday 4th – Sunday 6th May is available for £25 from the webstore. (Please note that weekend creative writing workshops are not included in this ticket offer and must be booked separately.) For detailed information about all NCLA Festival of Belonging and Fringe programme events you can download the Festival brochure from the NCLA website. Alternatively, further information on individual events can be found by clicking on the hyperlinks given below:
Friday 4th May
Sapphire in conversation with Jackie Kay followed by a screening of Precious, 8pm – 11pm, Tyneside Cinema.
Tickets (£10/£8 [concessions]) are available online from the webstore or directly from the Tyneside Cinema on 0845 217 9909 or www.tynesidecinema.co.uk. Alternatively, call Melanie Birch on 0191 222 7619 or email melanie.birch@ncl.ac.uk.
Saturday 5th May
Creative writing workshop with NCLA writer in residence Helen Oyeyemi: ‘The “I” That Tells a Story’, 10am – 12pm, Culture Lab, Newcastle University.
Tickets (£15/£12 [concessions]) are available online from the webstore. Alternatively, call Melanie Birch on 0191 222 7619 or email melanie.birch@ncl.ac.uk.
Creative writing workshop with Linda France: ‘Coming Home’, 10am – 12pm, Culture Lab, Newcastle University.
Tickets (£15/£12 [concessions]) are available online from the webstore. Alternatively, call Melanie Birch on 0191 222 7619 or email melanie.birch@ncl.ac.uk.
Bernardine Evaristo, Daljit Nagra and Helen Oyeyemi discuss issues of identity and displacement within their works, 1.30pm – 3pm, Culture Lab, Newcastle University.
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.
Launch of the new Bloodaxe poetry anthology, Out of Bounds, which provides a vivid alternative map of Britain as viewed by its black and Asian poets, 4pm – 5.30pm, Culture Lab, Newcastle University.
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.
Novelists Tahmima Anam and Hari Kunzru and the announcement of the winner of the NCLA International Student Short Story Competition 2012, 7.30pm – 9pm, Culture Lab, Newcastle University.
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.
A Place Around the Hearth: Art Exhibition Preview is a visual art exhibition created by clients of Freedom from Torture North East, a charity that supports victims of torture. This free event, 11am – 9.00pm, Culture Lab, Newcastle University, is an opportunity to see the work before the exhibition opens at Minsteracres Retreat Centre in September 2012.
Sunday 6th May
Creative workshop with Gillian Allnutt: ‘Unbelonging’, 11am – 1pm, Culture Lab, Newcastle University.
Tickets (£15/£12 [concessions]) are available online from the webstore. Alternatively, call Melanie Birch on 0191 222 7619 or email melanie.birch@ncl.ac.uk.
Creative workshop with Lisa Matthews: ‘The Rooted Space, a workshop on identity and sexuality’, 11am – 1pm, Culture Lab, Newcastle University.
Tickets (£15/£12 [concessions]) are available online from the webstore. Alternatively, call Melanie Birch on 0191 222 7619 or email melanie.birch@ncl.ac.uk.
Tina Gharavi in conversation with Jackie Kay follows a screening of Tina’s recent film I Am Nasrine, 2pm – 5pm, Tyneside Cinema.
Tickets (£8/£6.95 [concessions and students]) are available online from the webstore or directly from the Tyneside Cinema on 0845 217 9909 or www.tynesidecinema.co.uk. Alternatively, call Melanie Birch on 0191 222 7619 or email melanie.birch@ncl.ac.uk.
Culture Lab Radio will be broadcasting a collection of radio plays, Iranian Voices, on Sunday 6th May. For more information on the schedule for the day and to listen online visit http://culturelabradio.ncl.ac.uk . There will be also be the opportunity to listen to the plays as part of GIFT, Gateshead International Festival of Theatre, during which NCLA’s listening post, Apostrophe, created by Stevie Ronnie, will be stationed at St Mary’s Heritage Centre in Gateshead and feature a different radio play each day of the festival.
The Fringe programme gets the whole NCLA Festival of Belonging off to a great start with Trashed Organ running events from Monday 30th May – Thursday 3rd May:
Monday 30th April
‘We’re All Mad Here’: a dynamic night of poetry from Stevie Ronnie, Claire Askew, Andrew McMillan and Lizzie Whyman with music from Fiona’s Jazz Express, 8pm – 11pm, The Central, Gateshead.
Tuesday 1st May
Creative writing workshop with Christy Ducker: ‘Putting Yourself on the Map’, 2pm – 4pm, The Bridge Hotel.
Tickets
free but booking essential.
‘Castles, Collieries and Coastline’: celebrate the culture and history of the North East with Christy Ducker, Pippa Little and Tom Kelly plus Darren Richard Carlaw and Stepaway Magazine present an exploration of North East flânerie with Ira Lightman, Bob Beagrie, Ian Davidson and Keith Parke plus music from the Lake Poets, 8pm – 11pm, The Bridge Hotel.
Wednesday 2nd May
Poetry workshop with Tony Williams: ‘A Long Way from Home’, 2pm – 4pm, The Central, Gateshead.
Tickets
free but booking essential.
Kalagora: splicing poetry with theatre, Siddhartha Bose journeys from the street surrealism of Mumbai to London’s East End via Manhattan on millennium night, 7pm – 8pm, The Central, Gateshead.
‘Anywhere I Lay My Head’: an evening for nomads and romantics with poetry from Tony Williams, Sheree Mack, Daniel Hardisty and Susannah Pickering plus 1930s gypsy jazz and country from Rob Heron of The Tea Pad Orchestra, 8pm – 11pm, The Central, Gateshead.
Thursday 3rd May
‘I Don’t Think We’ve Met?’: a final night of specially commissioned new collaborations between a myriad of musicians, writers and artists exploring ideas of belonging plus music from Fiona’s Jazz Express, 8pm – 11pm, The Bridge Hotel.
All tickets for Trashed Organ events can be purchased from www.trashedorgan.co.uk. For £15/£12 (concessions) a Trashed Organ Fringe Festival Pass gives you access to all events and workshops in the Trashed Organ Fringe Programme.
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. The under 19s belonging poetry competition is accepting submissions in two categories - 14 and under and 19 and under - with a deadline of 20th July 2012. Competition judges are Matthew Sweeney and a panel of young adults. Shortlisted poems will be turned into a poetry trail across Newcastle-Gateshead in autumn 2012. Further competition details are available on the NCLA website.
If you attend NCLA Festival of Belonging events, don’t forget to leave feedback about your experience - you could win signed books from writers taking part in the Festival of Belonging weekend. The survey is also available online.
A reminder that NCLA’s online journal for creating writing will be dedicating its summer issue to the Festival of Belonging. The deadline for submissions is Sunday 13th May. For more information about the magazine and submission requirements see www.frictionmagazine.co.uk or contact editor@frictionmagazine.co.uk.
Thursday 10th May (7pm, Culture Lab, Newcastle University) sees the launch of the anthology In Your Own Time (Shoestring Press, 2012), which marks twenty years of the Northern Poetry Workshop founded by Sean O’Brien. Edited by Gerry Wardle, the anthology showcases the work of fourteen members including Peter Armstrong, Colette Bryce, Helen Farish, Paul Farley, W.N. Herbert, Joan Johnston, Jacob Polley and Katharine Towers. All members in attendance will chip in with a poem on the night. Come and enjoy the celebration with a glass of wine.
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.
In addition to the NCLA Festival of Belonging, events in May include:
The continuation of the First Thursday readings with Seaton Sluice novelist Richard W Hardwick on Thursday 3rd May, 1pm, Lecture Theatre 6, King George VI Building, Newcastle University. Bring your sandwiches and enjoy this free event.
NCLA is pleased to be welcoming Robin Black and Jackie Kay, Thursday 17th May, 7pm, Culture Lab, Newcastle University. American fiction writer Robin Black’s first short story collection If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This (Random House, 2010) takes readers into the minds and hearts of people navigating the unsettling transitions that life presents to us all. Jackie Kay's new collection of short stories, Reality Reality (Picador) is published in May. As ever, in this newest and most luminous of collections, Jackie Kay finds dignity in solitude, humour in love, and something universal in longing.
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.
Professor Sean O'Brien has been shortlisted for the Griffin International Poetry Prize for November (Picador) and along with the other finalists will be invited to read in Toronto on 6th June. This Canadian award is the biggest available for a single volume of poetry. Previous winners of the international category include Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and John Ashbery.
Sean O’Brien and W.N. Herbert are taking part in a Robert Browning bicentenary event, introducing and reading from their favourite Browning poems at the Lit & Phil on Wednesday 9th May, 7pm. Admission is free.
NCLA Creative Writing Development Officer Viccy Adams has been named on the shortlist for the prestigious Charles Pick fellowship at UEA. The winner will be announced this Summer.
Creative Writing PhD student Barbara Henderson (writing as Bea Davenport) has published her adult suspense novel Kill and Tell on Amazon Kindle. The novel was shortlisted for a Luke Bitmead Bursary and was a runner-up for New Writing North's first ever Andrea Badenoch award.
Two Creative Writing PhD
students, John Challis and Beverly Nadin, have been featured in the anthology Lung
Jazz: Young British Poets for Oxfam which will be published by Cinnamon
Press next week.
At the end of May Creative Writing PhD student Stevie Ronnie is undertaking a residency at Nomadic Village 2012, a temporary international artists’ settlement on the outskirts of Wolsingham, County Durham.
Paul Broadhead, who works in
the Newcastle University Student Progress Service, has just had his first
book Tremors – Travel Adventures in Post Earthquake Japan published by
Bangkok Books. Paul wrote the book whilst travelling throughout Japan in
March 2011, just two days after the biggest earthquake in the country's
history. It is available as an e-book from Bangkok
Books, on Amazon,
Barnes & Noble, Sony and iBooks and as a hard copy direct from the author
at www.facebook.com/paulbroadheadwriter.
Pauline Plummer, who was recently shortlisted in the NCLA Water poetry competition, is reading from her latest work From Here to Timbuktu (Smokestack Books, 2012) on Thursday 10th May, 6pm, Sassari, Middlesbrough. Admission is free. Email pauline.sonnet@blueyonder.co.uk for further information.