Bournemouth Literary Festival 2010
Once you agree to take part in a festival, time gets distorted. You start a year ahead, the first six months or so slide past and suddenly our Chairman, Lillian Avon, who also founded the Festival, is talking seriously about the need for more frequent committee meetings and firming up on venues, tickets and publicity. And then, help, it’s here!
The next seven days from 22nd to 28th O...
2nd November 2010
Where to sell your poems and stories for money.
Some people take up the gentle hobby of writing because they feel it will pass the time and prove diverting. Others may enter the field of anopisthographical combat for the challenge of the adrenalin fuelled gladiatorial contest against the very vocabulary that they are seeking to conquer and ul...
4th October 2010
Four Hundred and Tenby Two Hundred and Twenty
Writing competition judges, Judith Barrow and Emily Hinshelwood, for short story and poetry categories respectively, have awarded first, second and third prizes for the three best short stories and...
1st October 2010
Confessions of an Edinburgh Fringe Veteran
How many shows do you have to take to Edinburgh before you can describe yourself as a ‘Fringe veteran’? If the answer is ten, then Project Adorno, the poetry/music ensemble I’m half of, could just ...
1st September 2010
Interview with the Legendary John Cooper Clarke
First published in Pennyblack, and reproduced with kind permission http://www.pennyblackmusic.co.uk/GenSitePages/NewHP.aspx
Writing a piece about a writer can be a little bit tricky. Part of yo...
4th July 2010
The inevitable happening in the lake district
There is a lead character in J D Salinger’s novel Franny and Zooey who finds the shallow materialism of modern life 'soul destroying'; its ordinariness and greed 'demoralising'; and its university ...
1st July 2010
Gullible Travels
Jonathan Swift, Isaac Bickerstaff, M..B Drapier and Lemuel Drapier had much in common - not least - they were all writers. Yet perhaps a more common trait that they shared, as well as their propens...
31st May 2010
Holding On and Looking Out by David C Johnson
This latest collection of poems from Bristol poet and spoken word performer David C Johnson made me slightly apprehensive at first as it is recommended by the author that they are to be ‘read in be...
1st May 2010
A to m bombs and a to z gems
1
There are many, many more types of poetic expression than the personal lyric.
The lyric has become predominant at the present time because of political and ideological factors: we l...
2nd April 2010
Binalong Time
Poet, Novelist, Lawyer, Grazier, Traveller, Journalist, Editor, War Correspondent, Soldier, Sportsman and noted Horseman.
1st April 2010
Where there's a Will, there's a way
This book began as a pamphlet, of a 1990 Hilda Hulme Lecture entitled ‘Ways into Shakespeare’s Sonnets’.
It is a book of close-reading, a book that investigates poetry in depth, from its langua...
1st March 2010
A win's a win - Bolton Howcroft
Well, I was picking the bones out of ‘Ancrene Wisse’, a 13th century masterpiece of Middle English prose - but what the hell - let’s talk about proper words and stuff innit.
I’ve not travelled...
21st February 2010
Had Field Will Travel
A review of Nigh-No-Place by Jen Hadfield.
There are many things to like about this book, not least the cover picture of one very aware horse in an open landscape, that we can only take to be p...
27th January 2010
Two Cinammon Poetry Collections
Quaintness and Other Offences, Ann Drysdale (Cinnamon Press, 2009)
The Shadow House Kathy Miles (Cinnamon Press, 2009)
Drysdale and Miles have different writing styles, how...
9th January 2010
