Poetry in Trowbridge, Bradford-on-Avon, Bristol, Oxford and elsewhere.
Plus - Have your say on Wiltshire's Cultural Strategy
Thanks to all who came to Trowbridge Stanza at Drawing Projects UK last Saturday for the poetry feedback session. I’m so sorry that a few of you weren’t able to make it because of illness and/or inclement weather. You were missed!
We shared poems-in-progress, contributed and received informal feedback, and discussed our various poetry and literary projects. It was a friendly, helpful and interesting session. We all enjoyed it so much that it was decided to run the same event next month, on Saturday 6 April (2-4pm). If you’d like to take part, please bring ten copies of a poem that you feel needs some more work. Everyone is welcome to attend this meeting and to give feedback and to listen to others even if you don’t bring a poem this time. Reading and constructively commenting on other people’s poems is an enjoyable and effective way to develop poetry writing. For practical purposes, it would help if you could let me know by email if you intend to bring a poem for feedback josephinecorcoran13@gmail.com. Booking is via Drawing Projects UK. Tickets are £5. If you don’t have a poem-in-progress but you’d like to talk about a poetry project - for instance a sequence you’re developing - please come along and share your ideas and plans - as one of our group, Naomi, did last time.
Looking further ahead, Trowbridge Stanza won’t meet in May as the first Saturday falls on a Bank Holiday weekend. Later in the year, I’ve invited some guest readers to share their work with us and one or two of you have suggested running informal workshops for the group. Do, please, let me know if you’d like to run a session.
If any of you are in or near Oxford on Monday 11 March, I’m reading with Arji Manuelpillai and Lucy Ingrams for Creation Theatre and Live Canon at the former United Reformed Church, Summertown. Tickets (£5) and more information here.
In Bradford-on-Avon, there’s space on my Creative Writing workshop on Tuesday 19 March, 10.30am - 12.30pm. We’ll be reading, talking about, writing and sharing poetry, short fiction and dialogue. You might know that before I started publishing poetry, I wrote plays and short fiction for Radio 4 and for the stage. I’m interested in the current resurgence of hybrid writing and the blurring of genre, also the connections between prose poetry and short fiction. These are some of the topics we will engage with in this workshop.
On Saturday 13 April, 2pm - 4.30pm, I’m teaching a workshop on Writing Political Poetry. How do you transform your passion, energy and anger about current affairs into a coherent and persuasive poem? We’ll be considering this and other questions as we read and discuss a selection of poems engaging with issues such as class, ethnicity, the environment, disability, gender and other political topics, and begin to write and share our own political poems. More information about both workshops here or do, please, get in touch if you’d like to know more.
Lyra Festival in Bristol runs 12 - 24 April and the programme is now available to browse and book here. Personally, I’ve already nabbed a ticket for the Alice Oswald, Caroline Bird and Rachel Long reading!
There is a callout from The Poetry Business for an anthology marking the 40th anniversary of the Miners’ Strike. More details about workshops and events and the anthology here.
You might also like to know about The Poetry Society’s Annual Lecture on Thursday 9 May, 7-9pm at the Yoko Ono Lennon Centre in Liverpool which you can book free tickets for to see in-person or online. This year the South Korean writer Don Mee Choi will be giving the lecture and performing some of her poems. Link for tickets is here.
Lastly, please take a few moments to complete this survey from Wiltshire Council which is consulting on its cultural strategy for the next six years. In particular, I’ve said that I’d like to see more literature events across the country but especially in Trowbridge! It would be wonderful to see Wiltshire’s cultural offer develop. Please complete the survey and let the council know that culture matters to you.
I’ve no other news at the moment. Please keep in touch and let me know of anything you’d like me to include next time. Are you managing to get out and about? I’ve been some for satisfying stomps along the Kennet and Avon Canal recently.