Month: April 2018

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Altrincham Word Fest – May 2018

Last year I was invited by Anne Early and Yoko Isami to perform and host a poetry event as part of the Hidden Altrincham Arts Festival.

The event, in September, at Riddles (specialist spirits retailer) was a great success but little did I know at the time that the seeds had been sown to create a brand new festival focused on writing and literature; but they had well and truly been sown and the result  is Altrincham Word Fest 2018.

Altrincham Word Fest has a unique selling point: all literature festivals focus on encouraging and sharing a love of literature and reading but this new festival on the block really focuses on giving people the chance, and a gentle nudge, to create their own writing.

I am of course delighted to be part of this exciting new event on the literary calendar and you can find details of all of the events and book places by following the links below:

Sat 12th May – 13:30 to 15:30 – Life writing and personal narrative workshop with Kate Feld

Sun 13th May – 13:30 to 15:30 – Creating powerful characters with Sarah Cassidy

Sun 13th May – 13:30 to 15:30 – The stories we could tell a workshop for young people 14-18 with Seamus Kelly

Thur 17th May – 19:00 to 21:00 – An evening with Paul Carroll self-publisher extraordinaire

Sun 20th May – 13:30 to 15:30 – Creating content online with We Blog North

Thur 24th May – 19:00 to 21:00 – Poetry open-mic night hosted by Seamus Kelly

Sat 26th May – 14:00 to 16:00 – The Power of Poetry with Seamus Kelly

Sun 27th May – The art of flash fiction – How to write a short story in 150 words with David Gaffney

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Altrincham Word Fest – Poetry open mic night

Just one week to go to the Altrincham Word Fest Open Mic session.

Date: Thurs 24th May 2018

Time: 19:00 – 21:00

Location: Coco’s Italian Restaurant, Altrincham (www.cocositaliancafe.co.uk)

Here is the chance for all local poets and poetry lovers to share your poetry in front of a supportive crowd with myself, Seamus Kelly as Master of Ceremonies.

This will be a pressure-free event and even the most nervous new poet will be guaranteed support and encouragement. All levels of experience are welcome so you can bring your first poem or your 1000th and share it at this relaxed evening of poetry at Coco’s in Altrincham.

With no specific theme, or poetic style, we will be happy to hear you work whether it be quiet personal musings, lyrical meanderings, thought provoking meditations or tub-thumping  rhetoric.

Should you have a poem you’d like to hear performed just let me know on the night and I’ll be happy to read it for you. If you have a favourite poem written by someone else that you would like to hear performed then why not bring it along to share?

The open mic is a great chance to hear a range of different poets, to learn and share our rhyming couplets, our stanzas, our quatrains, sestinas and our free verse. There will be poems to make you smile, poems to spark memories of imagination and poems to make you pause for thought or even cry and of course most importantly to enjoy as we listen to others people’s ways with words.

 

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Altrincham Word Fest – The Power of Poetry Workshop

Just over a week to go to my Power of Poetry workshop as part of the Altrincham Word Fest so I’m refreshing the parts prose can’t reach and ensuring the everything is ready to go.

Booking is essential through the Eventbrite site – to book click HERE

Once you’ve booked you need only bring yourselves, a pen and paper might be handy but don’t worry I’ll have plenty with me, and together we’ll make sure that you leave full of ideas and inspiration and of course some brand new writing of your own.

Time and Date: Sunday 26th May, 2018

Location: Coco’s Italian Restaurant, Altrincham (www.cocositaliancafe.co.uk)

Image made up of many words relating to poetryDetails: Poetry can convey our stories, ideas and emotions with great power. This workshop guides and inspires new writers with handy techniques to create writing full of power and feeling. The workshop includes an introduction with examples, discussion, idea development and lots of opportunity for the participants to be creative.

My final session as part of the Altrincham Word Fest 2018 will be my “Power of Poetry” workshop. First delivered in 2016 this workshop is suitable for people who are regular and capable poets and for those just contemplating putting together their first poem.

As a poet I realised that the very word “poetry” can be construed in so many different ways that each of us might have our own view of what poetry really is. In this workshop we’ll see how poetry can give language extra power, how it can directly access the emotions – I sometimes define poetry as like prose but on steroids. I’ll share poems that will make you smile, stop you dead in your tracks, amuse or challenge; and the poetry will do that quickly and accessibly.

You don’t need to be well read, you don’t need to have a particular cultural background and you don’t need a particular level of education. Writing poetry needs only your own native language, your own thoughts and a few tools or techniques – we all have them we sometimes just need a little nudge and maybe support to get going.

In this session you will use some of those tools and techniques (and the nudges) and everyone taking part will finish up with some brand new poetry to be proud of – and we’ll all have a good time.

What’s not to like?

You can book your place HERE

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Altrincham Word Fest – SWCT young people’s workshop – Sunday 13th May 2018 – 13:30-15:30

Two years ago I was invited by Steve Cooke of “All Across the Arts” to be part of a project called “Stories We Could Tell” in Rochdale. In two weeks time we’ll be bringing this exciting work to share in Altrincham.

You can book a place here

The project gives young people, who have experienced trauma of any kind, the opportunity to explore ways of telling their own stories in a pressure free and friendly environment. There are a number of professional creatives on hand to assist as required. We started out with a storyteller, a visual artist, a singer songwriter and myself an poet and writer. We have since benefitted from input from people working in acting, music, radio, journalism and animation as well as an art teacher and a guitar tutor.

So far we’ve seen young people tell their stories through songs, raps, poems, letters, visual art, animation, short film, photographic storyboards, videos, artwork, scripts, anime drawings and radio broadcasts. Currently several people are learning to play guitar and we have several longer pieces of work underway including a book-length fictional tale, a comic book story and a script for radio performance. The first young people to take part included some asylum seekers, some young people living in care and some who have mental health issues and at the end of the project several have become mentors for the next group which is a wonderful example of the power of positive support and creativity.

We meet at Vibe on Monday evenings and with facilities including a radio studio, recording studios, plenty of musical instruments, lots of space to relax or work and a range of art materials on hand. There are plenty of snacks provided and the professional coffee machine provides not only great hot drinks but the opportunity for some of the young people to be trained as baristas.

We can’t bring all of this to Altrincham for one afternoon but we will bring some of the people, lots of the ideas and the ethos to the Stories We Could Tell workshop for young people as part of the Altrincham Word Fest.

Along with Matt George (animator, droid maker, artists and technocrat) we will share some of the great experiences from the SWCT project in Rochdale to Open Studios in Altrincham as part of the Altrincham Word Fest and we will give people the opportunity to start to explore their own stories and the support and guidance to get underway – who knows where this will lead….

It will be interesting, it might be emotional, it might be entertaining; it is guaranteed to be fun!

You can find out more about SWCT on our brand new website here

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Poem and photo in The Bolton Review 2018

Mono photo of an old pocket watch without hands

Last year I was delighted that one of my poems and a photograph were selected for inclusion in the Bolton Review so I am doubly delighted that some of my work has been selected for publication for a second year.

The Bolton Review is a student led creative arts magazine from the University of Bolton – you can find more about the production and the beautifully printed magazine here.

As studied for my PGCE at Bolton University in 2007 and to be recognised among those who have studied creative writing and visual arts at the University is particularly pleasing.

With a first degree in science (ecology) from the University of Lancaster and having worked in IT for about 20 years a career change to work creatively with images and words felt like a massive and risky change. In reality it felt like coming home, using the same creative thought processes to solve problems with IT, find ways to teach people new systems and finding new ways to express ideas are really much more similar than one might imagine. Inclusion in the Bolton Review beautifully links the scientific and creative sides to my careers.

The works to appear will be my poem “A short walk” and my photograph “Timeless” which is pictured here. The Bolton Review 2018 will launch at Bolton Central Library next week please click here for further information and tickets