Sheffield Hallam MA Writing
NEWSLETTER
Spring 2010
Contents:
Welcome from course leader 2
Do you want to be involved with… 2
Feature: Hallam MA student Helen
Meller interviews Hilary Mantel p4
Masterclass series p9
Staff news p11
Student news p12
Upcoming events p14
Hallam tutor, Hilary Mantel, wins Booker Prize!
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Message from course leader
Happy New Year and welcome/ welcome back to you all! We have another full and
exciting programme of Masterclasses for you to put in your diary this semester. Our first
event, on Wednesday 27th January, will be the launch of the novel Falling Through
Clouds by Hallam MA graduate Anna Chilvers (formerly Turner) at 6.15 Blackwells
Bookshop, adjoining the Owen Building. There will be a reading and drinks and a
general opportunity for those just embarking on the course to meet more seasoned and
more published students and graduates of the MA. Please do come! You'll find a full list
of Masterclasses below!
The Hallam MA attracted a lot of very positive attention last semester after our visiting
lecturer, Hilary Mantel, won the Booker Prize. If you didn't see it you might be interested
to see the glowing write-up that appeared in the Yorkshire Post. entitled "Aspiring Writers
Find their Voice," See:
http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/features/Aspiring-writers-find-their-voice.5801323.jp
Here's to another successful and creative and enjoyable semester and if you run into any
problems please don't hesitate to contact either me, Mary Peace by email
m.v.peace@shu.ac.uk or on x4205 (I work Monday to Wednesday) If it is more of an
administrative matter or you can't get hold of me please contact Becky Fischer
Thompson, our course administrator, either by email or on extension 6194. She is
around Monday to Friday.
All very best wishes,
Mary Peace
Office hours: Wednesdays 12.30- 1-1.30
Do you want to be involved with…?
 The Erasmus exchange to Paris, Sorbonne IV
An Erasmus exchange scheme has been set up for students in English and History, and BA and
MA writing students are particularly welcome. Although there is no Creative writing course at
the Sorbonne, there are courses on contemporary literature in English, publishing, and media –
all taught in English - and a student on an Erasmus visit would be able to pick and choose which
seminars she/he wished to attend. There is an excellent postgraduate course on publishing and
media, with weekly seminars. Or it may be that a writing student has other specific areas of
interest in Paris that they want to research for a book. It is possible to go for a term or an
academic year.
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On an Erasmus visit all tuition is free: the only headache and expense is accommodation, and the
Sorbonne can offer some help and advice here. If you are interested, look at courses on the
Sorbonne IV website, and for further info about the Sorbonne please e mail
jane.rogers@btinternet.com or Michele.Thery@paris-sorbonne.fr For information about how
the Erasmus scheme works from this end, please contact Matthew Stibbe, m.stibbe@shu.ac.uk
 Getting involved or published in Matter 10.
Matter is an anthology of new writing edited and published by the Writing MA students at
Hallam.
Angelina Ayers, editor of Matter 10 says:
"We want you to send us your poetry, prose and script for submission. We want to hear from all
of you, whether you’ve been on the course for years, or you’re just starting your certificate
modules. All work will be considered anonymously, and successful entries will be featured in
Matter 10.
Matter features writing from present and former students alongside guest writers. In previous
editions, this has included Hilary Mantel, Sean O’Brien and Ali Smith.
Matter is sold in bookshops in Sheffield and London, as well as online. We are planning launch
events, in association with the Off the Shelf Festival, where all contributors will be invited to
read.
Additionally, agents and editors will be receiving copies of Matter 10, so it really is a great
platform for your writing.
Submission Guidelines
·
Prose – fiction (short story, novel extracts, children’s fiction) up to 2500 words
·
Poetry – up to 4 poems
Script –Script a complete scene of no more than 10 minutes length (or 10 pages)


(Only one submission per person for prose, script and children’s fiction although you
may submit for more than one genre, e.g. one novel extract and four poems)
Submissions should work as self-contained pieces of writing, even if they are novel
excerpts, fragments or extracts from a longer work.
The submission deadline for Matter 10 is Friday, May 21st.

Submissions should be emailed as Word attachments and should be clearly marked with
your name and email address on the first page of the attachment. Please also indicate if
your work is intended for children by marking as ‘Children’s Fiction’.
 We would prefer submissions to be in 12 point Times New Roman and double-spaced
for prose, single-spaced for poetry. Work should not previously have been published.
 Please send work to the editor at the following email address:
mattereditor@hotmail.co.uk
Submissions will be distributed anonymously to the relevant genre editors and decisions made
over the summer ready for publication in October.
www.makingwritingmatter.co.uk
or follow Matter Magazine on Facebook and Twitter
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Feature: MA
Writing student,
Helen Meller,
interviews Hilary
Mantel
Hilary Mantel gave two pieces of advice on her final engagement as visiting professor at Sheffield
Hallam last autumn. The first: write from the heart and not for the market and second: find a
writer in sync with your inner tick over.
For both teacher and practitioner, creative writing is an inexact science. ‘There is no such thing
as bad writing’ says Mantel, ‘it’s just writing that is on its way to being better writing.’ Writing she
believes is an organic process, it cannot be forced. Novels have to be grown and every writer
needs to allow themselves plenty of gardening time. Undue emphasis on over structured outlines
she believes can have a deleterious effect on the act of creation. Less fixation on the product and
more on the process is the mantra.
Mantel was born in Glossop in 1952, the eldest of three children, and was brought up in the
Derbyshire mill village of Hadfield, attending the local Roman Catholic primary school. Her
extended family was Irish but her parents Margaret and Henry Thompson, were born in England.
After losing touch with her father at the age of eleven, she took the name of her stepfather, Jack
Mantel.
She began writing at an early age. ‘The magic slate was a favourite toy of mine. I could write
anything I liked, but if someone loomed into view I could disappear it in an instant.’ But this was
a two way mirror as she was soon to learn. ‘I saw that the pen left marks on the plastic sheet, like
the tracks of writing on water. It would have been possible, with some labour and diligence, to
discover the words even after they had been erased.’
Mantel is a self confessed see-er of ghosts, something she has managed to channel effectively for
narrative gain. ‘My childhood gave me a very powerful sense of being spooked. I didn't know
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whether what I was seeing were sensory images of other people's unhappiness. Perhaps that was
just the way the world manifested itself to me.’
For Mantel, it is the act of writing that conjures the ghosts. The tabula rasa does not exist; like the
magic slate it is freighted with the impressions of what has gone before. ‘The story of my
childhood is a complicated sentence I am trying to finish and put behind me. It resists
finishing…I am haunted by the ghosts of my own sense impressions which re-emerge when I try
to write, and shiver between the lines.’
She began writing in earnest in her twenties when she was living in Africa with her geologist
husband, Gerald. 'I don't suppose I would have written at all if my health had been better. I was
in despair as to how I was ever going to make a mark on the world. All I was good for was
sitting on a sofa with a notebook.' The result was A Place of Greater Safety, an epic novel which
distils the French revolution through the eyes of a trio of hot-headed idealists; Desmoulins,
Robespierre and Danton. Mantel’s empathy with her twenty something characters is evident in
her rendering of the past with the immediacy of the present. Here the waters begin to muddy;
was this history in modern dress or fiction in period costume? The main events in the novel are
real but history is assigned an ambiguous role, ‘why invent when the truth is free?’ Mantel takes a
mischievous delight in genre bending.
‘For historians, creative writers provide a kind of
pornography. They break the rules and admit the thing that is imagined, but is not licensed to be
imagined.’ The possibilities she believes are endless and it is this that drives the narrative and
ensnares the reader. ‘Which versions of the past to believe? Which sources to rely on? Then
there are the people you meet by the way - incidental characters to you, but worth a whole
novel.’
It was during the writing of the book that she learned her craft. The complex narrative threw up
every conceivable problem and she needed to equip her toolbox accordingly. History has gaps,
so she was forced to invent. But her choice of historical fiction was predicated on a belief that
she couldn’t do plot. Five years and two drafts later, the manuscript was rejected.
Undeterred (‘if I could do it for the eighteenth century I could do it for the twentieth’) she began
to write shorter contemporary fiction, finding her inner tickover in Ivy Compton Burnett. There
were also similarities to Muriel Spark. Her next four books were published in quick succession
between 1985-1989. Everyday is Mother’s Day and Vacant Possession (textbook Mantel; eccentric
characters in a darkly comic and spooky setting), Eight Months on Ghazza Street (the plight of
women under the Saudi regime) and the award winning Fludd (nuns and priests in a fictitious
Northern town in the 50s). By now Mantel was described as being in the ‘front ranks of novelists
writing in English.’ And when a journalist asked her if she had any unpublished manuscripts
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lurking in a bottom drawer, the offending item was snapped up immediately and published in
1992. The book was A Place of Greater Safety. She had well and truly arrived.
Mantel followed this up with three more novels: A Change of Climate, An Experiment in Love and
The Giant O’Brien. Mantel adapted the latter as a drama for Radio 4, a project she felt played to
her strengths. Learning to write screenplays changed her she says, not that she has any current
ambition to jump ship, (the BBC is planning to dramatise Beyond Black but Mantel won’t be
writing the screenplay) but the discipline was invaluable.
But it was with the writing of her non-fiction book Giving up the Ghost that Mantel really lifted the
lid on process. Part metafiction, part autobiography here is an inalienable authorial presence.
Taken as a companion piece with Beyond Black it is almost impossible to separate author from
character, experience from history.
It is this sense that any form of creative writing is a form of historical writing is what has
informed Mantel’s work, ‘beneath every history, there’s another history.’
Our recall, our
imagination, our experience is all ripe for reinterpretation and rewriting. We are all therefore in
our own right, historical novelists without genre.
Whether in a historical or a contemporary setting, creating believable characters is Mantel’s
stock in trade. ‘We have to conjure the people of the past, summon them back to us so they can
lead us to our future…it is the duty of the novelist to look both outward and inward, to the past
and the future, to the particular and the universal, to the parish and the world.’ And this is borne
out by the panoply of characters littering Mantel’s work, some too numerous to plot. ‘Every
novel that goes to the printers has a dozen shadow selves. Vital decisions are taken before the
first word goes down on paper. Sometimes they're brooded on, sometimes made in a split
second, but the tone is set early, and the author gets a glimpse - it may be no more - of his or her
intention. Then, on every page, further decisions are taken. This character comes to the fore, this
one drops away. This piece of information is imparted, or held back. The story could be quite
otherwise.’
It is these ghosts of meaning that haunt the pages of Mantel’s books and it is her ability to
channel them which allows her to animate her characters so convincingly, both real and imagined.
‘The creative imagination is a place of safety for the dead, where they can show their faces and
be recognized.’
And it is her uncanny ability to ventriloquise or voice the past, which is at the heart of her
writing. 'I spend a lot of my time talking to the dead, but since I get paid for it, no one thinks I'm
mad.' And what is this if not the work of a medium? Secretary of the invisible, the intermediary
between past and present.
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To a great extent she says her novels are about ‘transformation, alchemy. And the ever-present
spooks ... this idea of an unknown area or a shuttered room.' If that is the case then it’s fair to
say that Mantel’s spirits have broken out of the darkened room and are walking the streets
amongst us. The haunted house is now the suburban home and the séance goes on with the
writer at the helm, ‘you carry upon your shoulders the weight of other people’s projections, of
their fears and fantasies their anxieties and superstitions. You represent mortality whether you
like it or not. And so it is with any public role, including that of Writer.’
Perhaps this is why the phantasm is such a pertinent and effective vehicle for Mantel?
‘Phantasmagoria is about the words we find for the things that aren't quite there. It is about the
images we choose, to bulk out with an illusory form what actually lacks substance, and about the
metaphors we use to embody the bodiless. It is about the ways that the dead live.’
Mantel is more than happy to give houseroom to the dead. A perfect host in every sense. ‘The
table is laid, and the dead are peering at their placecards…waiting expectant, for whatever is next.
Food or entertainment, it’s all one to the eyeless, the shrivelled and the thin: to the ones who
have crossed into the land where only the living can provide their light. I will always look after
you, I want to say, however long you have been gone. I will always feed you and try and keep
you entertained; and you must do the same for me.’ Mantel has obvious affection for the ‘little
dead’ , she sees her role as a writer as nourisher of the spirit world; her spirits of both family and
fictions.
Mantel’s life has been dogged by the spectre of ill health and writing is undeniably a sapping
experience. ‘Novels wear authors out, a clever man said to me recently. Writers get to a point
where they're too weary to furnish another book, to start a new plot creaking forward on its
course, to set up the characters and push them around the page.’
Wolf Hall (her tenth novel) has been five years in the making and weighing in at 650 pages
Mantel still couldn’t fit the story into one book. The sequel The Mirror and the Light is due later
this year.
And perhaps it is no coincidence that Mantel is at one with a protagonist who came into his
power in his fifties and who history has often misrepresented. The historical image is two-faced,
pointing outwards to the historical subject and inwards to the author’s psyche. ‘I think that by
the time you've written a few novels, it's quite futile to pretend that you're not your characters.
They penetrate your life, you penetrate theirs.'
In many ways Mantel has come full circle, returning to the genre that appears to be her natural
home. It’s a synaesthesic world with only a thin veil between reader and character. We are
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immersed so deeply we can smell and taste it yet we are always aware that behind the arras is an
author.
Her ability to reanimate history has earned her many plaudits along the way, the most prestigious
being last year’s Man Booker. Winning the prize Mantel admits was definitely a career marker but
more importantly for her it was a vindication. For hadn’t she committed the sin of writing
historical fiction when it wasn’t fashionable?
But Mantel has never followed fashion, ‘don’t let anyone push you about with talk of market, be
true to your own talent.’ Now she says it’s one less thing to fret about, she can just get on with
her job.
Over the years Mantel has moved from the margins where she dwelled very happily in the
company of ‘freaks, weirdos and provincials’, to the centre ground where she ‘took a flag and
planted it in the middle of national myth.’
For those of us who have loved and admired her for decades it came as no surprise when she
won the Booker last year. In fact The Guardian summed it up neatly ‘Hilary Mantel’s win comes
with just the faintest twinge of regret from those of us who have always regarded her as our
secret. One can only envy the newcomers.’
Hear, hear.
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Master Classes/Events Semester two: 2009/10
All Masterclasses and events are held from 6.10 p.m. to 7.20 p.m. in The
Void, 123 Owen Building, level 1, except where stated.
Wednesday 27th January at 6.15pm: Book launch by SHU MA graduate
Anna Chilvers (formerly Turner)
Blackwells Bookshop, adjoining the Owen Building
Falling through clouds pub Bluemoose Books. Kat, a 22 year old student, returning home to
Devon for the summer holidays meets Gavin on the train. They spend the summer in Cornwall
but he has something on his mind. He is plagued with nightmares after having been held hostage
in Iraq and she soon finds she is out of her depth, but in too deep to get out unscathed.
Falling through clouds interweaves mystery, romance and myth, while revealing a dark secret
at its heart. Anna is 43, lives in Hebden Bridge with her three children, husband and dog. This is
her first published novel and she is running her first marathon next year. In her spare time she
organises writing, literary and music events as she is the Reader Development Officer for
Calderdale. She also enjoys practising yoga.
Anna's prose is razor sharp, her dialogue pitch perfect. This her fine first novel, weaves a tale that moves
effortlessly between light and darkness. It's a serious page turner, moving, witty and thoroughly engrossing. Lesley
Glaister
Come and enjoy a reading, a glass of wine, and the chance to meet an independent publisher and
support a fellow MA graduate by buying her book.
Feb 10: Alison MacLeod on Short story
Alison MacLeod is the author of two novels, The Changeling (Macmillan) and The Wave Theory of
Angels (Penguin). Her short stories have been published by Prospect, London Magazine,
Bloomsbury, Virago, and Serpent’s Tail; they have also featured on BBC Radio 3 and 4. She
won the Society of Authors' Olive Cook Award for Short Fiction in 2008, while her short story
collection, Fifteen Modern Tales of Attraction (Penguin), was named as one of the 'Top Ten Books to
Talk About in 2009' in association with World Book Day events. Her work has won major
Writer’s Awards from both Arts Council England and the Canada Council for the Arts, and, in
2009, she was made Professor of Contemporary Fiction at the University of Chichester. Last but
not least, she was a guest contributor to our very own MATTER 9.
Alison will be focussing on the fantastic in the contemporary short story: There’s a materiality to
imaginative life and imaginative experience,’ Angela Carter wrote, ‘which should be taken quite seriously.’ In
this session we'll discuss the tradition of the fantastic in literature and, particularly, its force in contemporary short
fiction. What is it about the short story form that makes it a natural home for the fantastic? We'll touch on the
role of ‘imaginative logic’ in literature as well as the power of metaphor, image, dream and myth – traditions that
continue to inspire leading short story writers today.
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24th February: “Reading your own” - a practical master class for the
presentationally challenged (and the good public reader seeking to get
even better )
Hallam writer-tutors Mike Harris (script), Felicity Skelton (prose fiction) and Harriet Tarlo
(Poetry) will be offering practical advice on delivering your own work to best advantage in front
of an audience. They are inviting students to bring in extracts or poems to be worked on in the
masterclass. So, if you fancy having your presentational skills massaged in front of a live audience
E-mail Mike Harris now at harrismichael@btinternet.com. Guinea pigs will be selected on a
first-come first-served basis, and in order to get a spread of forms.
3 March: Jo Calum of BBC WRITERS' ROOM NORTH
Engaging the audience: an introduction to writing for tv and radio with BBC writersroom.
BBC writersroom champions writing talent and promotes writers across BBC departments,
channels and programmes. It works in partnership with theatres, writers' organisations and
screen agencies to help writers to develop. Jo Calam is project manager for BBC writersroom
north and in this session will offer a brief introduction to writing for tv and radio including
current opportunities for new and emerging talent across the BBC.
10th March: David Smith – Agent – Annette green Authors’ Agency
We have always followed an energetic policy of seeking out the very best undiscovered writers of fiction; and of
offering our clients a personal service that is second to none. What we look for in fiction and non-fiction alike is
vision, imagination, originality, and invention, conveyed in writing which inspires passionate enthusiasm.
David Smith has been a partner at Annette Green Authors’ Agency since 2001. After graduating
from Cambridge with an English degree in the 80s he worked as Sales and Distribution manager
for the Time Out Publishing Group. In 1999 he left Time Out to study law and pursue a career
with the law firm Freshfields. However, his first love was books, so when his partner and future
wife Annette Green realized she could no longer run her expanding literary agency alone, David
gave up the law and joined her in the business they now run together.
24 March: Margaret Drabble on Fact and Fiction
Dame Margaret Drabble is a Sheffield born novelist and critic who has published seventeen
novels, most recently The Sea Lady (2006). She also edited The Oxford Companion to English
Literature (1985, 2000). She will talk about the mysterious relationship between fact and fiction,
with reference to The Pattern in the Carpet: A Personal History with Jigsaws, a semi-memoir published
by Atlantic Books in 2009, and discuss the never-ending challenge of finding the right form for
what you need or want to say. She is married to the biographer Michael Holroyd and lives in
London and Somerset.
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14 April: Daljit Nagra - Reading, and on revision/rewriting poetry
Daljit Nagra comes from a Punjabi background. He was born and raised in London then
Sheffield. He has won several prestigious prizes for his poetry. In 2004, he won the Forward
Prize for Best Individual Poem with Look We Have Coming to Dover! This was also the title of his
first collection which was published by Faber & Faber in 2007. This won the Forward Prize for
Best First Collection and The South Bank Show Decibel Award.
Daljit is on the Board of the Poetry Book Society. Daljit has judged the Samuel Johnson Award
2008, The Guardian First Book Prize 2008, The Foyles Young Poets Competition 2008, The
National Poetry Competition 2009. He has also hosted the TS Eliot Poetry Readings 2009.
21 April: The Hallam Script Nite
The Pods, Student Union.
10 or so short, funny, moving, tragic and provoking scripts by Hallam creative writing students
will be performed script in hand by four professional actors in front of a live audience consisting
of you, directors seeking plays, agents seeking clients and other unlikely figures from fantasy and
folklore. A call and deadline for submissions will be going out in the next week or two with specs
of what and how to submit. If your work is selected for performance you will be invited to
attend and participate in the rehearsals of your work by the actors and two professional directors.
There will also be a bar and live music. What’s not to come for?
STAFF NEWS
Lesley Glaister's new novel Chosen is coming out with Tindal St Press in May.
David Harmer's book of children's poems It's Behind You, is coming out this year from
Macmillan. It's a book of Monster poems co-written with Paul Cookson. He's also back to work
in schools as well as SHU and beginning with a project in 4 Rotherham Primary Schools
involving Gifted and Talented pupils in drama and writing. The first(drama) will culminate in a
celebration day at the Leeds Armouries in March, the second(writing poetry) at Magna in May.
As usual he's very involved in the first week in March with National
Mike Harris is working on a street theatre script for Carcophony Street theatre Company, is
starting research for a new play on the subject of 'gangs guns and knives' for GW Theatre in
Education company, and has a commission from BBC Radio 4 drama department for a dramadoc about a nurse who was murdered whilst backpacking in South America, and her husband
who tracked down and found her killer.
The Constable Robinson expanded version of John Milne's (Tom Bowling’s) Pirates and
Privateers was published in January. In a bookshop near you.
An extract from Conor O'Callaghan's first novel The Living Room was published in The Dublin
Review in December. http://www.thedublinreview.com/current/index.html
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Jane Rogers' story 'Hitting Trees with Sticks' was shortlisted for the BBC National Short story
award in Dec 09, and broadcast alongside the other 4 shortlisted. It has been published in the
competition anthology and will appear in the US in the Kenyon Review in the autumn.
Her classic serial adaptation of Edith Wharton's Custom of the Country was broadcast on radio 4
Jan 3 – 17 2010.
She is currently on study leave, working on a collection of short stories.
Felicity Skelton: Had a story long-listed for the international Mslexia short story competition
last year. She also had a play produced at Hope Church. She will be attending a paper on the
short story at the Short Story Conference in Toronto in June.
Student News
Rachel Genn's novel The Cure has been accepted for publication by Corsair
(Constable/Robinson) in spring 2011. Below are details of the imprint of Constable and
Robinson (Corsair) see http://www.thebookseller.com/news/100832-page.html
The agent is Hannah Westland at Rogers Coleridge and White.
Panos Papanagiotou has been shortlisted for the Impress prize for new writers, which he
found out about through the MA --- it is open only to unpublished, students of graduate creative
writing programs. You can find the link here http://www.impress-books.co.uk/prize.html
Bryony Doran’s novel The China Bird, published in April 2009 as a
result of winning the Hookline Novel competition, continues to
receive great reviews on the internet (see www.bryonydoran.com for
more details). In 2009 Bryony read at both the Ilkley and Sheffield
literary festivals and in December was Sheffield Hallam Alumni of the
month. The China Bird, now available as an E-Reader, also became
Independent Book Publishers Book of the Month.
Bryony is to have a short piece (Broken Face) published in the
Writing for Therapy Works sequel by Jessica Kingsley Publications in
mid 2010.
Russell Thomas: has won this year's Waterstone's Bookseller's Bursary for creative writing with
an extract from my novel Firewatching. Prize - £500 and a week's Arvon course to be taken during
work-time.
Tricia Durdey won the Cinnamon Press Short Story Award in August 09. My story 'The
Visitors', will be published by Cinnamon Press in April in an anthology 'The Visitors and Other
Stories and Poems'.
I was also in the last ten shortlist for the Cinnamon Press Novel Award in November 09.
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Andrea Ashworth has had short stories accepted or published by Tears in the Fence, The
Yellow Room and Lablit.
Rebecca Swirsky's short story 'Lillia in the Whale' was accepted by the Liars League, an
organisation that promotes new writing by staging regular readings where the work is read by
actors. These are then broadcast online in the form of mini podcasts alongside the
text. http://liarsleague.typepad.com/liars_league/
Val Binney will have three poems published in the December, February and April issues of
'Decanto'.
Anna Chilvers book launch at Blackwell's on the 27th, as it is a masterclass, but the bookseller
inside me just wanted to make sure.
Since the last newsletter, Noel Williams won the Milton Keynes Speakeasy poetry competition,
was a prize-winning runner-up in the Troubadour poetry competition, a finalist in the Aesthetica
Creative Works competition, was awarded Honours and Highly Commended in the Trowell
Writers’ poetry competition, Highly Commended in the Newark Poetry competition and also joint
winner in the Ladder Writers’ article competition.
His poems have been newly accepted for or appeared in Delinquent, The New Writer, Aesthetica
Creative Works Annual, Streetcake, Little Pinkshack, Aspire, Chapter and Verse, the Coffee
House/Troubadour website and the anthologies Champion Poems and Words from the Web.
Two of the poems can be found at: http://www.coffeehousepoetry.org/poems
http://www.mkweb.co.uk/Speakeasy/DisplayArticle.asp?ID=69011
MA in Writing graduate Carolyn Waudby was a finalist in the 2009 Mslexia Poetry Competition.
She also staged a collaborative exhibition of poetry and photography on Cuba in the Sheffield
Institute of Arts gallery, Furnival Building, for Sheffield's Off The Shelf Festival. This coincided
with the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution.
More than 70 people attended a private view. The exhibition was launched with a sell-out
reading at Fusion cafe and accompanied by a book designed by Sheffield Hallam Graphic Design
students - which has now also sold out. See www.travelswithapen.com
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Upcoming events
"Cathy Bolton and Suzanne Batty will be giving a poetry reading at Manchester Central
Library (Committee Room, 2nd Floor) on Thursday 4th February, 1pm as part of LGBT
History Month. Free event. Everyone Welcome.
The region's New Voices hit the stage
Wednesday, February 3 and Thursday, February 4 – 7.30pm at the Riverside Theatre, Horncastle
Building, Hull College
Tickets £4 (£3 concessions) or saver ticket for both nights £7 (£5 concessions) available from
Box Office (01482) 598979
Follow us at twitter.com/SYHull
An innovative drama festival will showcase the work of a host of new writers from the region.
The New Voices festival will see 15 short plays and excerpts from full length pieces performed
over two evenings. The festival, which takes place on February 3 and 4 2010, is the first show
from the Hull branch of Script Yorkshire.
The festival is a remarkable achievement for the newest branch of the writers' network as it was
formed just six months ago.
All 15 pieces are original dramas and, according to director Peter Lawton, the two evenings will
comprise the most diverse and eclectic mix possible.
He said: “All of the writers are very different and there is a real mix of work. Having worked
closely with the writers to develop their work I can confidently say that there is some real talent.
The festival is all about new writing and giving this selection of new voices from Hull and the
surrounding area a stage. The end result will be a very entertaining couple of evenings for
audiences to enjoy.”
Scripts will be performed by professional actors alongside performing arts students from the
Hull College and be staged in the college's Riverside Theatre auditorium. With eight pieces of
drama scheduled for each night audiences will also be presented with good value for money.
Chair of the Hull branch of Script Yorkshire, Kate Hainsworth, said: “The Hull branch has got
up and running with incredible speed since it was formed in summer last year. We quickly
realised the drive and ambition that we all had, as writers, and that, collectively, we all wanted to
get our work in front of the public.
“There is a really wide choice of work on offer. I hope that people will choose to come to both
nights and enjoy the work of all of our branch members. “
The New Voices festival will be performed in the Riverside Theatre, Horncastle Building, Hull
College, on Tuesday, February 3 and Wednesday, February 4 at 7.30pm with a different
programme of work each night. Tickets are available for just £4 (£3 concessions) per night or £7
(£5) for both nights from the Box Office (01482) 598979.
/Ends.
Writers and director Peter Lawton are available for interview and photo opportunities. For
further information or to arrange review tickets contact 07963 117783 or email
dwindass@tiscali.co.uk
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Exploding Poetry: an exhibition and an opportunity
From Feb 9th to March 6th the Bank Street Arts Centre here in Sheffield will hold an exhibition
arising from Noel Williams’s work as Resident Poet, under the title Exploding Poetry, in
collaboration with the artists Michael Harding and Katherine Johnson and curator Ben Womack.
One exhibit, a sound installation, incorporates contributions from fifty other writers, including
several from the MA (Angelina Ayers, Cathy Bolton, David Brookes, Susan Clegg, Nick Howard,
Joan Hoare and Fay Musselwhite), additional readers from the MA (Andrea Ashworth, Tricia
Durdey, Laura Wake, Kelly Watson) and contributions from the English tutors Felicity Skelton,
Barbara Vesey and Linda-Lee Welch. The exhibit will include visual poems, digital poems, poetry
objects and opportunities for visiting writers to add their contribution to the evolving exhibition.
There’ll also be a reading by the Tuesday Poets, who include poets on the MA, and other poetry
events.
For details of the exhibition and a chance to contribute, see: the items “Poetry Café” and
“Exploding Poetry” at http://www.bankstreetarts.com/ And for Noel’s own take on it, check:
http://poetryoffthepage.wordpress.com/
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