Dead Good Poets – December Diary 2009

Published on December 7, 2009 in Dead Good Poets and Events. Closed Tags: .

Diary for December 2009

Wednesday 2nd: 2.30pm-4.30pm: Book Launch – The Poet’s Perspective (Headland Press). This beautiful book focuses on a selection of famous paintings exhibited in the Walker Museum. Each has inspired a poem by a range of authors: Roger McGough, Pat Fearon, Alicia Stubbersfield, Janette Stowell, Ade Jackson, Rebecca Goss and more. Hosted by editor Gladys Mary Coles. All welcome! Free event.

Wednesday 2nd @ 8pm – DEAD GOOD POETS SOCIETY OPEN FLOOR. 24 slots of 5 minutes over three sets for you to perform your own poetry. New poets always welcome – come early to book a reading slot. The 3rd Room, Everyman Bistro, Hope Street, Liverpool. £2/£1 pay on the door.

Saturday 5th December: 12:00pm – 8:30pm From Laptop to Bookshop
Ticket Prices: £20 / 15 Day ticket including readings
£10 / 7.50 single workshop, £5 / 3 readings An exciting day of workshops, readings and meet the author events, suitable for emerging and more experienced prose fiction writers.
12.00 – 2.00pm Workshop (women only): Writing a Synopsis, with Debbie Taylor – helping writers identify what their book is about and communicate it to an agent or editor.
3.00 – 5.00pm Workshop (women only): First Paragraph, with Lesley Glaister – helping novelists and short story writers create an arresting opening.
7.00 – 8.30pm Reading/interview (open to all): Hilary Mantel & Debbie Taylor. Hilary Mantel reads from her most recent work and talks about her personal ‘road to publication’: how she became a writer, her mistakes, regrets, false starts. Followed by an interview and questions from the audience.

Monday 7th @ 8pm: Come Strut Your Stuff! Poetry and Music Open Mic at The Egg Café, Newington, Liverpool (opposite New Quiggins). http://www.comestrutyourstuff.co.uk/

Wednesday 9th @ 8pm: Vale Royal Writers Group and Dead Good Poets Society meet for their annual Christmas Poetry Party (aka Poets & Pints). Guest Poets Alicia Stubbersfield, Andrew Rudd and David Bateman with lots of open mic slots. The Blue Cap, Sandiway, Cheshire.

Friday 11th @7.30pm: An Evening of Poetry with Micheal O’Siadhail
“Love in a Shifting Globe”, Elm Hall Drive Methodist Church, Elm Hall Drive, Off Allerton Road, Liverpool L18 www.osiadhail.com.

Monday 14th December @ 8pm: Zest! Poetry at Alexander’s Jazz Bar, Rufus Court, Chester. Really friendly open mic poetry event hosted by the Zest! Team.

Wednesday 16th @8pm: DEAD GOOD POETS SOCIETY CHRISTMAS PARTY!
(And Annual General Meeting). Join us for a quick report of what we’ve been up to as an organisation this year and then fun and festive frolics. All welcome!

Thursday 17th @ 8.30pm : Wirral Ode Show. Open Mic hosted by Shell Wright and Jason Richardson (with regular appearances by Oscar Wilde!) The Stork Hotel, Price Street, Birkenhead.

And don’t forget to check out the calendar on www.writeoutloud.net for details of the many events WOL organise in the North West – from Manchester to Wigan, Bolton to Hebden Bridge, no place is immune to the Power of Poetry!

And www.clarekirwan.co.uk/scene.htm for Wirral-based events

Dead Good Poets – November 2009 Diary

Published on November 2, 2009 in Dead Good Poets and Events. Closed Tags: .

* Monday 2nd November @ 8pm – Come Strut Your Stuff! Poetry and Music Open Mic at The Egg Café, Newington, Liverpool (opposite New Quiggins). http://www.comestrutyourstuff.co.uk/

* Wednesday 4th @ 8pm – DEAD GOOD POETS SOCIETY OPEN FLOOR. 24 slots of 5 minutes over three sets for you to perform your own poetry. New poets always welcome – come early to book a reading slot. The 3rd Room, The Everyman Bistro, Hope Street, Liverpool. £2 / £1 pay on the door.

* Thursday 5th @ 7.30 pm FIRST THURSDAY POETRY EVENING at Linghams Bookshop, 248 Telegraph Road, Heswall, Wirral. The programme will include: Stephen Spender’s centenary – celebrated by Gill Curry and Guest Poet: Kit Jackson. 1poem open mic £4.
Continue reading ‘Dead Good Poets – November 2009 Diary’

Alice Lenkiewicz: ‘Men Hate Blondes’. Poems and Drawings

Published on October 25, 2009 in News. Closed

AL-BookCoverAlice Lenkiewicz : Men Hate Blondes
coming soon!

Alice Lenkiewicz’s first collection of poems and drawings, ‘Men Hate Blondes’   ISBN 978-0-9562433-4-8  £8.00
or contact the author for a signed copy poetshideout@yahoo.com

Alice Lenkiewicz’s inaugural collection of poems, Men Hate Blondes, is  a tight exploration of the political as seen through the personal. Her frequent line enjambments, startling images and sometimes deceptively nonsensical-seeming word combinations will make this book a challenge for some readers, but what makes these poems worth reading is the author’s refreshing trust in her audience, that they do not need to be led by the hand.’   Joanne Merriam

‘Alice Lenkiewicz, a modern alchemist, effects the transmutation of lived experience via the intimate crucible of her rare, poetic imagination – informed by an artist’s visual sensibility. ‘  A C Evans

‘Men Hate Blondes is a kind of poetic bildungsroman, it offers up its insights in a savvy use of montage, dreamscapes, cityscapes and fantasias all matched with Lenkiewicz’s dispassionate itinerant observation; this is a refreshing, developing new voice testing out its boundaries in a world still forming and reforming around us.’  Chris Hamilton Emery

http://thesamsmith.webs.com/originalpluscollections.htm#463291876

Nathan Jones – Chapter and Verse PERFORMANCE line-up

Published on October 9, 2009 in Events. Closed Tags: , .

Chapter and Verse PERFORMANCE line-up « Poet in Residence at the Bluecoat.

I am delighted to reveal the line-up for my show at the Chapter and Verse Literature Festival.  This is one of the most impressive list of performers I have ever had the pleasure of putting together.

The idea is that I’ll be able to present lots of different takes on what poetry is – for instance, the picture above is of Mark Greenwood beating a chicken to pieces – and what it means to be moved by a performance.  All the acts have revolutionary takes on their attitudes to poetry in performance – it should make for a thrilling night!

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REVOLUTIONS IN FORM

8.00pm – 10.30pm, Sunday 18th October.

Produced by Poet in Residence at the Bluecoat, Nathan Jones, specially for the Chapter & Verse Literature Festival, in partnership with Mercy, Revolutions in Form presents some of the most innovative writer/performers at work today, alongside artistic contemporaries and musicians… Redefining the territory for poetry in performance.

**Poetry & Performance from**
Lorena Rivero De Beer, Mark Greenwood, Kate Tempest, Ross Sutherland, Tim Clare and Nathan Jones

**Music from**
Lizzie Nunnery and guests from the Almanac folk collective

**Projections, Live Visuals & Music from**
Sketchybeast, Sam Meech, Neil Keeting and Markus Soukup

While the world of arts and literature has moved forward in perceptions of itself during the last century – through innovations in forms, definition, technologies and concepts of authorship, ownership and value – the perception of the poem in performance has changed very little since the days of Dada and the Beat ‘happening’.

However, revolutions of considerable ambition have been taking place beneath the hype-radar – typified by a tendency towards interdisciplinary production, re-editing and processing, and a distorting of the roles of performer and audience. Revolutions in Form is a showcase of these culturally important, entertaining and powerful works.

HIGHLIGHTS:

* special sets from Tim Clare and Ross Sutherland, whose work blurs the boundaries between poet, film-maker, animator, musician, lecturer and stand-up comic

* innovative new live-drawing commissions to accompany new poetry performances from poet in residence at the Bluecoat, Nathan Jones

*contemporary and traditional revolution songs from renowned playwright and songstress, Lizzie Nunnery

* an improvisation-based finale contrasting the whirlwind of rebellion and energy that is Kate Tempest against the visceral, unpredictable and often controversial work of Mark Greenwood.

Tickets £5/£3

Poetry news and events for October 2009

Published on October 7, 2009 in Dead Good Poets, Events and News. Closed Tags: , .

Poetry news for October 2009 from Sarah MacLennan of DGPS

* Wednesday 7th October @ 8pm: Dead Good Poets Society Open Floor. 24 slots of 5 mins for you to perform your own poetry. The 3rd Room, Everyman Bistro, Hope Street, Liverpool. £2/£1 pay on the door. A Dead Good welcome guaranteed!

* Thursday 8th October: 10 am – 5 pm National Poetry Day: Liverpool Poetry Marathon. For the 4th year running North End Writers, the creative writing charity serving the people of Liverpool, is holding an all day event on National Poetry Day. We are inviting the people and poets of Merseyside and the North West to come along to The Hornby Room in Liverpool Central Library to celebrate the theme, Heroes & Heroines.

For a reading slot of approximately 5 minutes please contact our organiser, Anna-Maria Parry, who will add you to our list of readers.

If you have a piece of work longer than 5 minutes and want to use this day as a show case please e-mail Anna with a brief outline including reading time and we’ll try and accommodate your work. Or just come to listen to the poetry! Audience members always welcome!Contact: Anna at info@northendwriters.co.uk

* Wednesday 14th October @ 7.30pm – The Return of the Superheroes of Slam. In celebration of Black History Month, Writing on the Wall, in association with Commonword, is hosting the Liverpool heat of the North West ‘Super Heroes of Slam’ competition – the quest for the ultimate ’slam poet’. This exciting event takes place on at the Casa.
To enter, please contact Madeline Heneghan by email or telephone. There are a few places left but they’re going fast so don’t miss out! Tel: 0151 703 0020Email: info@writingonthewall.org.uk

* Thursday 15th October @ 7.30-8.30pm: Speed Date a Book. For this event, The Reader Organisation is asking you to come along with your favourite book or poem and all the reasons why you love it to see if you can find your perfect reading match. We’re acting as the matchmaker, hosting ‘Speed Date a Book’ to bring together literary lovers to share their favourite reads, meet fellow readers and perhaps find that all important perfect partner, be it in text or human form. Are you able to be there with your favourite read?
Join us in the bar at the Bluecoat, School Lane, Liverpool from 7.30pm, armed with your favourite read (be it poem or novel) and get ready to tell people why it’s so great (and hopefully find a perfect match).

* Sunday 18th October @ 7.30-8.30pm: The Reading Cure: Chapter and Verse at the Bluecoat, School Lane, Liverpool – free!
Join staff from The Reader Organisation for this free clinic, to solve your problems with the help of some of our greatest writers. Are you worried about your job? Are you always getting into relationships with ‘that man’ or ‘that woman’ who’s just no good for you? Are you desperate to share something joyful? Come along to The Reading Cure clinic and discover how fiction really can help reality.

* Wednesday 21st October@ 8pm. Dead Good Poets Society Guest Night: Angela France plus Open Floor.
Born in Cheltenham in 1955, Angela France feels a deep connection to the land and people of Gloucestershire, where she organised and now runs Cheltenham’s only regular live poetry event: “Buzzwords at The Beehive”.
She has had work accepted by a number of magazines including Iota, Acumen, The Frogmore Papers, Rain Dog, Obsessed with Pipework, Orbis and Envoi. Her poems have also appeared in the anthologies The White Car, When Pigs Chew Stones (Ragged Raven Press) and Mind Mutations (Sun Rising Books).
“Angela writes with passion and clarity; here is a meticulous sensuous imagination, richly structured and musical” – Penelope Shuttle

* * * Links * * *

* Chapter and Verse Literature Festival
From Wednesday, 14 October 2009 to Sunday, 18 October 2009: 10:00am – 10:00pm
www.thebluecoat.org.uk

* Sefton Celebrates Writing 2009
http://www.literaturenorthwest.co.uk/event/1444

* Kudos Writing Magazine
http://www.kudoswritingcompetitions.com/

* For literature opportunities – jobs, calls for submissions, competitions

http://www.literaturetraining.com/metadot/index.pl?id=2382

http://www.blankmediacollective.org/news/blankpages/

http://www.writeoutloud.net/public/index.php

SPECIAL EVENT!

A quick plug for a event that has been dear to Dead Good Poets’ hearts in the past. And a message direct from actor, writer and workshop leader Adam McGuigan:
“I am organising a small event to perform/exhibit/share some of the work from Zambia and show a short film documenting the experiences of 15 young Zambians as they travelled to Liverpool, Poland and Ireland for the first time last year. It’s beautifully truthful, innocent and full of fun, with first times on flights, escalators, trains and seeing the sea for the first time.
Since being in Liverpool, I have been joined by one of the Barefeet members from Zambia who has come over to be involved in the Hope Street apprenticeship programme. Mosten will be talking a little about his experiences whilst being here (ranging from being detained at Heathrow to visa problems to short skirts and a growing respect for Simon Cowell).
Please come along after work on Monday 19th October at 5:30pm in the Novas Centre, Greenland Street, Liverpool (bring a friend). It will be a short affair (no more than an hour) and will be a really lovely opportunity for me to share something very special in the middle of Africa and to show what I have been doing for the past 4 years.
It would be great if you could join us for a glass of wine afterwards, and a chance to say ‘twalamonana-see you soon’.”

National Poetry Day Events. 8 Oct 09

Published on October 7, 2009 in Events. Closed

National Poetry Day Events. 8 Oct 09 | Liverpool Art and Culture Blog.

Get inspired … at the Walker – Poetry competition

What sort of paintings inspire you? Those with flame-haired Pre-Raphaelite muses or striking 20th century works? National Poetry Day is on Thursday 8 October 2009 and we want you to be involved. Get inspired by a painting at the Walker Art Gallery, write a poem about it and send it to us. We’ll publish a selection of them on the website and pick one winning poem. The winner can choose one poetry book from this selection:

•           ‘Rapture’ by Carol Ann Duffy (hardback)
•           ‘The Mersey Sound’ by Roger McGough, Brian Patten and Adrian Henri (paperback)
•           ‘Andraste’s Hair’ by Eleanor Rees (hardback)

The theme for this year’s National Poetry Day is ‘heroes and heroines’, so we have put together a selection of paintings that we think fit in with this idea on the website. So now it’s your turn to look through our paintings and get inspired!

How to enter:
•           Browse the paintings on the link below and find something that inspires you.
•           Write your poem.
•           Send it to us by Monday 2 November using the online form.

Full details online: http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/online/getinspired.aspx

And at the Bluecoat


Illustration of Nathan Jones

Date: Thursday, 08 October 2009 | 12:00pm – 4:00pm

Location: Various

Ticket Prices: Free
The Bluecoat’s  poet-in-residence explores the Bluecoat’s hidden poetry.
Come and be inspired by the beautiful surroundings.

The Return of the Superheroes of Slam. 14 Oct 09

Published on October 5, 2009 in Events. Closed Tags: .

2009-SHoS

The Return of the Superheroes of Slam

In celebration of Black History Month, Writing on the Wall, in association with Commonword, is hosting the Liverpool heat of the North West ‘Super Heroes of Slam’ competition – the quest for the ultimate ’slam poet’. This exciting event takes place on 14th October 2009, at 19.30 at the Casa.  Entrants have three minutes to rock or shock the mike.  Judging is by audience response and by guest judges. The host for the night is the legendary Julian Daniel.

The winner of the Liverpool heat will go through to the final in Manchester’s Green Room on 21 October and will compete for cash prizes.

To enter, please contact Madeline by email: info@writingonthewall.org.uk or by telephone Tel: 0151 703 0020

There are a few places left but they’re going fast so don’t miss out!  All ages welcome.

Ticket price £5/£3 concessions on the door.

The Centenary Edition of Poetry Review

Published on September 27, 2009 in News. Closed

The Centenary Edition of Poetry Review | Liverpool Art and Culture Blog.

Now “One hundred years and counting…” – Poetry Review celebrates a century

Poetry Review celebrates its hundredth birthday with a special centenary edition. As editor Fiona Sampson says, it is “older than votes for women, or passenger flight”, in an era “before world wars, before antibiotics, before we split the atom or went to the moon.”

The Review is Britain’s oldest and most widely-read poetry publication. The Guardian calls it the national ‘magazine of record’. With new work from the country’s most important poets showcased alongside debutants, this issue continues and celebrates the Review’s central role in poetry over the past century, an era stretching from Rupert Brooke to Carol Ann Duffy.

‘Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue’ runs through this issue.

AUDIO: Poet in Residence at the Bluecoat – Slow Magic

Published on September 14, 2009 in News. Closed Tags: .

Just found time to listen to Nathan Jones latest poem responding to the Slow Magic exhibition. Excellent, have a listen.

To commemorate a very memorable and inspiring exhibition at the Bluecoat, ending this weekend. I have written a poem called Slow Magic.   Please download it HERE, and listen to it more intently than anything you have ever listened to before.

The poem is an attempt to reflect, or recreate the emotion of a visit to the gallery during the exhibition, not particularly to provide any critical dialogue or translation of the works themselves.  Something that I found particularly interesting – and this is a result of the generally Abstract nature of the paintings – is the way feelings occur when they have nothing concrete to attach to.  I have tried to reflect this in my poem, thought the use of mainly abstract words.  There are some concrete nouns in here, as there are figurative elements in the exhibition, but I have tried to mistreat or misplace them in a way that correlates to my experience of the paintings.

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Hopefully this hasn’t removed the potential for sense, empathy and power from the poem.

via nathanatthebluecoat

via AUDIO: Poet in Residence at the Bluecoat | Liverpool Art and Culture Blog.

The Corneliu M Popescu Prize for Poetry Translation – shortlist announced

Published on September 14, 2009 in News. Closed

popescu

The Corneliu M Popescu Prize for Poetry Translation – shortlist announced!

A chance to travel beyond British poetry

A shortlist of eight titles has just been announced for the Popescu Prize for Poetry Translation 2009. Selecting the shortlist was not an easy task. Elaine Feinstein, who judged this year’s prize alongside Stephen Romer, explains:
“The quality of submissions was remarkably high: a guided tour of classic poetry from many languages, countries and periods alongside poets altogether unknown to us. We decided our main criterion had to be bringing a new experience to an English reader.”
Fellow judge Stephen Romer was particularly excited by the translations of two strong women poets from Latin America: Gabriela Mistral and Dulce María Loynaz, who he said were “… unjustly neglected, even unknown in English, and now brought to us in all their passionate and classical austerity”.
This year’s submissions have exceeded past years with a total of 85 books entered from 24 countries. The shortlisted books are:
• Mad Women by Gabriela Mistral, translated by Randall Couch.
Spanish / Chile. (University of Chicago Press).
• Unfinished Ode to Mud by Francis Ponge, translated by Beverley Bie Brahic.
French / France. (CB Editions).
• Against Heaven by Dulce María Loynaz, translated by James O’Connor.
Spanish / Cuba. (Carcanet).

• Poems by Oktay Rifat, translated by Ruth Christie and Richard McKane.
Turkish / Turkey. (Anvil).
• Courts of Air and Earth, various, translated by Trevor Joyce. Middle and Early-Modern Irish / Ireland. (Shearsman Books).
• Birdsong on the Seabed by Elena Shvarts, translated by Sasha Dugdale. Russian / Russia. (Bloodaxe).
• Rime by Dante Alighieri, translated by JG Nichols and Anthony Mortimer. Italian / Italy. (OneWorld Classics).
• Selected Poems by CP Cavafy, translated by Avi Sharon. Greek / Greece. (Penguin Classics).
Organised by the Poetry Society and sponsored by the Ratiu Family Foundation, the prize is given biennially to a collection of poetry translated into English from another European language.
The strong shortlist shows the rude health of the British translation scene and provides the opportunity for the curious reader to take a journey beyond their own poetic horizons. “The shortlist is a chance to journey both inwards and outwards, both in the present moment and in those great poets from the past who can still quicken something in us today,” says Stephen Romer.
You can read the shortlist at http://tiny.cc/kDraR
The winner will be announced on the 19 November 2009 at the Ratiu Foundation, Manchester Square, 18 Fitzhardinge Street,
London W1H 6EQ.