… As usual, we’ll be featuring a participant each day, giving you a poetry resource, and an optional prompt.
Today’s featured participant is Glenn Mitchell, whose response to our early-bird prompt brings us rhyme, wordplay, and a heartfelt theme.
This year, our poetry resources will focus on social media accounts… that regularly post poems from books, magazines, and elsewhere, letting you discover new-to-you poets, and just get a quick fix of poetry… Today’s resource is the twitter account of the poet Tom Snarsky.
PROMPT: Today, we’d like to challenge you to write – without consulting the book – a poem that recounts the plot, or some portion of the plot, of a novel that you remember having liked but that you haven’t read in a long time.
Happy writing!
I started with the featured poet from yesterday’s prompt.
Shrug off the weighted judgment Spark the light within. ~ Glenn Mitchell
I enjoyed reading Tom Snarsky’s poetry posts and filled myself up with a breakfast reading of poems (I have unintentionally stepped back from social media and this was my first time back on Twitter since it became X).
It took a while to decide which novel to use and what point in the plot. The one which entered my head came with setting and it was a while before I could recall the main plot (I have read many books since). I could spend an entire day deciding which novel to write about and run out of time to write a poem. I avoided this pitfall and delved straight in.
To read the full post click here. What I generally do (and the amount of time I have to spend creating content and poetry during April varies) is link you back to the original post, post an abridged version of the prompt, resources and featured poet here. Then later after I have worked my way through it, I return to update the post with a reflection of the process, leaving a line or phrase. I don’t publish my full poems as this disqualifies the possibility of publishing them elsewhere. Every year I end with 30-99 poems, some are shockingly bad and others will never make it back out to the drawing board but every word counts as they lead you elsewhere in the future.
After April the file rests for May and most of June (and this year due to work, probably July also) then I sift and pan for potential and work with a selection of poems to create stronger endworks. Many have been published over the years.
Don’t worry about how many poems you produce or how good/bad they are. Just ENJOY it!
PROMPT (Always optional)
… an early-bird prompt: Pick a word from the list below. Then write a poem titled either “A [your word]” or “The [your word]” in which you explore the meaning of the word, or some memory you have of it, as if you were writing an illustrative/alternative definition.
Cage
Ocean
Time
Cedar
Window
Sword
Flute
Happy writing!
Before I could even dive into writing I set off on a course of creating after reading the post, particularly the secret lair! I don’t know about HQ but this is definitely how my head feels taking part in NaPo most of the time (but I LOVE it)!
Since Lockdown I have started to write in Notebooks (all those gorgeous ones I saved for a rainy day) a lot more and I would argue that it frees your mind and hand in a way that is sometimes lost when using a screen. However, I know I would NEVER get time to type any of it up and could potentially miss any gleams of gold.
I didn’t let myself read the list in an intense way – I blinked at the screen and went with the first word which went in…. which was CAGE. I read the list afterwards and liked what my eye picked out as otherwise I would have chosen Ocean and a lot of my work already holds half the themes on this list – I have banked Cedar/ Sword/ Flute for another time.
I opted for starting with the meaning/ origin of the word. This took me down enough rabbit holes. I started with The Cage – and within a few minutes had collected several definitions, both as a noun and verb, had noted thought associations which came to the surface during this initial dive. Had disappeared into the Latin enclosure – not literally, you’ll be glad to hear, but cavea obviously reminded me of caves which have a lot more positive connections for me than cages. Cavea / enclosure in this sense is actually the seating of amphitheatres (Greek & Roman) and is right up my drama background street!
I was reminded of a children’s book I bought when I started teaching which was never read and has only recently found its way into the charity shop.
20 minutes in and my head is full of possible starting positions and areas to explore. This always happens with every prompt. I end up with pages I could come back to. One year, I will find the time.
The more I discovered the further from those first thoughts of cage I was taken. Which is a good thing, as a rule (in business and poetry) the first idea is not always the hot one to follow. Go deeper. Sit with it/in it for a while.
To centre my focus I scanned the ever growing word doc for phrases/words and collected 2 lines of ideas to springboard from. Here’s a nugget:
Catching up with the pre-April posts at NaPoWriMo.net – still lingering in the world of Spine Poetry and the gorgeous collection I discovered, I am now about to speed-munch my way through the next exceptional resource! There’s so much I get from taking part in Napo every year – I don’t need to convince you but if I did I would signpost the rich resources you’ll have added to your toolkit by the end of the 4 weeks!
Maureen’s post from March 30th – which can be read in full here – it gifts an AMAZING resource, which you could, can and should spend months/years listening to!
If you’re based in the UK or know anything about UK poetry, you’ll recognise a good number of the archived poets. Many still producing work and very much on the scene. Exciting though it is to recognise poets and work, I find the rich pickings of such a resource lie in the undiscovered (to me) poets. I plan to spend a lot more time wading through the archive.
Well, here we are folks – the countdown to April is hours away. Pens at the ready…
I am delighted to catch up with the preliminary posts over at Napowrimo.net, whilst simultaneously filling in a slightly abandoned poetry diary. Or more accurately an overflowing inbox. Several diary dates have been filled for the next few weeks with Book Launches, meetings and events and I have recently taken a booking which excites me.
March 29th a post about Spine Poetry – which many of us have probably tried. Only a week ago I found some old photos of mine from 2021 where in a Lockdown workshop we were all creating just that. In the spirit of NaPo I’m sharing one of mine as well as those which struck me from the linked page Spine Poems. And in case you need further clarification this simple, clear explanation can be found on the resource page.
States of Mind – Book Spine Poem – Nina Lewis 2021
They are great fun to create – you can set limits too:
Constrict yourself with timing/ set a stopwatch
Books all over the house?! Restrict the area of the house you can reap resources from (only books on X shelf, or only from this room)
Only use hardbacks
Only use softbacks
Use only Non-Fiction titles
Or you could try a core theme and then mix the books up until you’re happy with the spine poem (which seemed to be a method used in the resource)
I spent some time looking through the suggested resource and these are my cherry picked pickings, a few of these blew me away:
And this was my bonus find! There’s always GOLD in NaPoWriMo! WOW! Birthday list…
So I hope you find some time to go and play with books and create some Spine Poems of your own.
A new folder has been created on a very tired and old laptop – here we are… nearly ready for NaPoWriMo (I can’t bring myself to call it GloPoWriMo – despite the nice ring and the GLOBAL phenomena stretched from origins in the US).
Head over to the official site. If you haven’t seen the annual posts in these waters and this is the first you’ve heard about NaPoWriMo check the About page out.
It’s a joy to read Maureen Thorson’s first post from nearly 10 days ago: read it in full here.
On your marks, get set, POETRY! No sooner than we break for summer – I’m back in my poetry/sorting out the house skin! There is a certain bliss attached to life without an alarm clock, the way the mind works more fluidly if you haven’t forced it out of dreamtime too soon. That said, of course my natural body-clock does not realise we’ve finished and is still waking me up at 6 AM!
To be fair the diary has been pretty fully booked over the past few weeks. I am limbered up and ready! So far my notebook has two workshops in it from this summer and I am looking forward to having an open enough mind for writing, finally working on my 2nd manuscript (whilst re-submitting the 1st) and getting organised to enjoy the final quarter of the year (and perhaps the rest of my life) in a tidy house! I may even get my office space before Christmas! Which is great as my contract completed and I am back to a sporadic freelance lifestyle.
My first workshop was with Red Earth Arts (REA) and the wonderful Sara Jane Arbury, it resulted in 3 draft poems a couple of which I am happy to work on.
It was a pure delight to spend my first holiday morning in a virtual room of poets, some of whom I have come to know well since Lockdown.
The 2nd day of my holiday I attended a workshop by Sean Lionadh. I didn’t know what to expect (which is always exciting). It is part of a series (the creative non-fiction happened before I finished work) and the theme is centred around the annual competition for the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival (SMHAF) which happens in October.
The Poetry workshop will be led by Sean Lìonadh, a poet, writer and filmmaker from Glasgow, known for his visual poem Time for Love which reached millions of people online, won a 2019 Royal Television Society award and was translated into five languages. It also inspired a Ted talk and led to the publication of his first poetry collection, Not Normal Anymore. His short film Too Rough screened at over 90 international festivals, winning over 30 awards including a BAFTA Scotland, BIFA and Grand Jury Prize at the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival in 2022.
It was a hard workshop to begin with (a Venn diagram was involved – we use them for assessment at work and as anyone in the profession will know we have been neck deep in statistics and results since May), so it took all my strength to stay with it. When people shared their Venn’s though… oh, my. Such bravery and vulnerability. With Art or the Arts in the centre of it all.
We then went on to look at some of Sean’s work – both in film and poetry before using his steps to create Revolution poems of our own.
I had no idea at the beginning of the exercise what would come out! But a lot did. I need to unpack it and work on it – especially as it is a little ranty. But the bones are good.
It was a wonderfully intense couple of hours and I have a book filled with notes.
~ It has since been edited with support and is now an almost completely different poem. I spent some time re-researching my facts as the time I was writing about was a few years ago now. It rested for days not weeks, I will now leave it a while before I assess whether the new poem is an improvement. It has been hacked rather than whittled. I feel that’s a good thing. Time will tell.
It has been a while since a Verve Reading. When I saw this event I was excited that it would be in my holiday. Verve Poetry Press continues to go from strength to strength and this reading was a great mix of poetry. And all poets were new discoveries for me.
Dide started by telling us about the collection, the structure, meaning and themes covered. Gems like this are always intriguing to me and I think, valuable to an audience who may be hearing the poems for the first time. I love that there is a poem you can create from reading the footnotes.
talking about her collection MAKING SENSE how it is structured and what it means. Themes covered. April release. The poem you can find by reading the footnotes. MAKING SENSE was released in April and you can find more information below.
Dide’s poems are packed with strong lines, they are cosmic, surreal and poignant: The Professor of loneliness // a murder of messages // heartbreak has its own hysteria – were particularly striking. Some of her poems on body chimed with those in my current manuscript, I was interested in what rested alongside them.
Tim Tim Cheng was next, originally from Hong Kong and currently living in the UK, her work plays with language, her love of language rises from her wordplay. There’s a lot of popular culture and clever depth in her poems too. And Sarah Howe endorsed her pamphlet! I love Sarah Howe’s work.
Her pamphlet Tapping at Glass came out with Verve in February – details of the book below.
Some of the poems she shared were about the body, displacement, things which enraged her, she also uses Chinese mythology. Notes to Impossibility and How do you spell (in Chinese)? are fabulous. Her work contains striking lines: what if words sweep me away more than housing me // when you’re gone I grow inwards like bark // losing track of time in the library of everything.
Then we had a reading from Golnoosh Nour, from her pamphlet Impure Thoughts, which was published in November 2022.
The poems in this pamphlet are tenacious and feisty, a focus on bisexuality and body desire. There’s woven narrative and event after event in the poems shared. She bravely shared some new work too.
Her poetry is energetic and forceful. Some brilliant lines:
sit close to you in a lack lustre dinner party without anyone noticing // your obsession with analysis hurts my instinct //
And finally Ana Seferovic read from MATERINA, which was the newest release as it came out this month.
MATERINA is described as a poem novel. Based on being an outsider and collective trauma it builds like a dark fairy tale. Ana Seferovic treated us to several extracts. An absorbing read (listen). Interesting occurences with the language translated between Serbian and English and English to Serbian. We arrive in a no-mans-land. Incredibly moving and some hefty lines:
//and her mother bringing the truth from the daylight // giant shining silver fish // that numbness was all we knew // truth was broken by a bullet in the peace // strangely wrapped geometries beneath my feet // and in that rupture the bird sings //
Ana’s poetic & philosophical narrative is incredible. Spellbinding.
Phynne Belle is a poet I met online back in the Lockdown, she runs series/events online but is based in the US so the time difference means that I haven’t attended many. She also comes along to some of the UK events I frequent. So when I saw she was offering a night (day for her) wordplay, I couldn’t resist.
The workshop was with David Leo Sirois. I haven’t had quite as much fun with words since a workshop with John Hegley, or back in 2020 when I had the delight of discovering the Oulipo* poets. In case you haven’t had the pleasure yet…
*Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle (Workshop for Potential Literature), a group of writers and mathematicians formed in France in 1960 by poet Raymond Queneau and mathematician François Le Lionnais.
I had a great time, it was a lovely group to workshop with and included a number of familiar faces I used to see often during Lockdown. It was good to reconnect, By the end it was a little late for my newly-holidayed brain – but I have a couple of poems I can work on and some exercises that would be good to use with a first coffee as a warm up sometime in the future.
I attended the launch of The Alchemy Spoon Issue 10. It was a great reading and exciting to hear a range of new (to be) voices alongside familiar ones. Great to be part of an enthusiastic audience, some great Guest Editor tips from Tamsin Hopkins. Some poets couldn’t make the reading but had sent videos, which I was glad about as they delivered superb poems. I was going to list all the poets, but I can go one better than that as I just discovered it has been uploaded so you can have a watch/listen too.
I’ve had a couple of days away from the computer, racked up hours sorting – lots of recycling and bag emptying, sorted a box for charity and have put aside (yes, there is a bit of a side to put) a bag of books I hope some youngsters in our family will enjoy.
I finished working the Drama job for the summer, made a trip to the library (borrowed a lot of kickstart material) and even managed to see family for lunch, which was a celebration in memory of a very loved and important person.
Mr G. is taking a break too so we are catching up with each other. And I FINALLY made some submissions!
Why are Book Launches like buses? Because two come along at once!
My submission schedule has been side-lined due to full time work and some current projects, but I have managed to keep a hand in (or two typing at least), so this summer there will be Book Launches! Yipee!
Both are in August (a day after each other), one in Scotland and one in USA. Having just experienced a drive down to Reading – for a wonderful time at Poets’ Cafe Reading – I feel a trip up to Glasgow or out to Cincinnati are a little beyond me both physically and financially. I will be promoting these events over the next couple of weeks.
During Lockdown I became involved with many wonderful projects (I should have cleared my house and redecorated like everyone else) but I chose to take it as an unofficial training year (or 6 months at least).
Rediscovering the Antonine Wall was a huge project spanning a multitude of areas. Dr. Zoë Strachan, is a Reader of Creative Writing at Glasgow University, who curated and edited this fine anthology. I thoroughly enjoyed my research and was delighted when the entire submission was accepted last year.
I was happy when I received my contributor copies in the post last month. It is an incredible body of work.
The Rediscovering the Antonine Wall project worked with the University of Glasgow to publish this Anthology, gathering stories and poems about the Antonine Wall from the local communities.
All Along the Edge: Contemporary Voices Explore the Roman Frontier
By Zoë Strachan
The blurb:
History is Story
The Antonine Wall was built around AD 142, by order of Antonius Pius, by members of the three Roman legions who were stationed in Scotland — the Second, Sixth and Twentieth Legions. It was abandoned by the Romans around AD 165. Almost nineteen centuries later, it is still part of the daily lives of many people in the Central Belt of Scotland: glimpsed across the landscape, walked on, worked on, lived on.
In All Along the Edge, new and established writers respond to the past, present and future of the Antonine Wall. Their voices let it take life in the imagination, through poetry, short stories and creative non-fiction. Together, these contemporary writers have made a new topology of the Roman frontier in Scotland, honouring and challenging the past and contributing to a rich and lasting future.
Contributors include: Ghananima AbdulKarim, David Bleiman, Anthony (Vahni) Capildeo, A C Clarke, Ross Crawford, R. A. Davis, Odile Mbias Gomes, Linda Haggerstone, Maryanne Hartness, Angi Holden, Nina Lewis, Peter McCarey, Joanna B McGarry, James McGonigal, David McVey, Morgan Melhuish, Alan Montgomery, Jane Overton, Richard Price, Kay Richie, Julie Robertson, Tawona Sithole, Kate Sheehan-Finn, Rebecca Smith, Leela Soma, Don J Taylor, Douglas Thompson, L Wardle and Hamish Whyte
Zoë Strachan’s words taken from the Foreword:
The Book Launch takes place on the 9th August at The Hunterian Museum, University Avenue, Glasgow G12 8QQ 5:30 – 7:30 PM and you can get tickets here. This is a LIVE event.
Rediscovering the Antonine Wall is the first pan Antonine Wall project designed to increase awareness and understanding of the Frontiers of the Roman Empire World Heritage. The project is funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund Scotland.
Tonight I recorded video readings for the Mercantile Library Book Launch on the 10th August. It is the 4th Edition of this annual anthology and I have been lucky enough to have poems selected in the 2nd and 3rd editions. Generally 1 or 2 poems are accepted. This year, The Well have taken all 4 of mine! Delighted dance!
This is a group I found in Lockdown. It was wonderful to celebrate National Poetry Month (this April) with weekly sessions.
None of the poems would exist without the Mindful Poetry Gatherings, Stacy Sims, Bryce Kessler or the abundant number of facilitators, to whom I am grateful.
‘Before Learning’ wouldn’t exist without my year of teaching. I had a 15 year full time career before I stepped away due to ill health. In order to pay the mortgage and assess whether I even wanted to teach anymore I took supply work. In order to heal my health I had to do various exercises which led me back to a place where I had a pen in my hand that wasn’t for marking! From this place letters to old friends came, mail that wasn’t bills arrived and within a year I was writing again for the first time in over 15 years.
A year later I remembered being a poet once and ink found its way back into beautiful pages that encapsulated small thoughts.
For 5 years I continued on this freelance/teaching life, accepting the huge pay cut was worth every ounce of mental health. However, as you know 2018 saw an unexpected operation and several injuries which combined into a 14 month recovery on heavy medication and life with a stick and no work. Returning back to work after being diagnosed with my first chronic condition (now on no.3) I managed 3 months and then… Covid 19 and the Lockdown. So I really had no choice but to get full time work as 2 years of no financial income or support had wiped me out completely.
It’s one reason mindful poetry is so important to me!
I knew I would enjoy working with this team and at this school, and it has indeed been a pleasure. Now there is just one week left to go!
I attended last year’s launch and saw the virtual readers as well as those in the room and got to explore the wonderful Mercantile Library too. I look forward to returning this summer, all but virtually.
The Enough to See project started with 10 Creatives: 5 Poets Laureate writing to the theme & 5 artists at Yew Trees Artist Studios then producing work inspired by our poems.
I am aware that the poems here and elsewhere in this post can’t be seen clearly here, this was intentional as we are now busy producing an anthology of art and words to celebrate Enough to See and copies of these will be available soon.
ENOUGH TO SEE… Artwork by the five Yew Trees Artists who earlier this year responded in very different ways to the theme ‘Enough to see… but not enough to see by’.
Clockwise from top left:
Richard Nicholls, Susan Birth, Jane Arthur, Jennifer Ng, Dan Holden.
This project is sponsored by The Arts Society Worcester.
The artist who chose to work with Aperture was Jennifer Ng. You can read all about our first meeting (after we had both created) in a piece I wrote here – Enough to See Beyond the Commission. She produces Contemporary Chinese Painting and works in Chinese ink and watercolour to create stories without words. Her artwork is acute and perfect. Her studio displays exquisite artwork and magical sketches, it shines with light and possibility.
This collection of images by Yew Trees Studio, spectacular though it is, does not do justice to the incredible artwork created by the artists in response to our poems. You cannot sense the enormity of these works (and I don’t just mean the scale).
Jennifer Ng’s piece is at the bottom and it runs almost the entire wall of her studio, it’s clever conception reflects how when we walk with others neither person sees the same thing. You can walk up and down the concertinaed artwork and see it entirely differently, an understory – which in turn reflected the inkling that there was a much deeper subtext in ‘Aperture’, one I talked to Jennifer about when we first met at Easter and a conversation I repeated with artists who had been inspired to use my poem as their starting point.
Richard Nicholls produced an A4 ezine/pamphlet of artwork which was gorgeous.
The Worcestershire LitFest & Fringe Festival Finale Event and the whole Enough to See event at Bevere Gardens was a fantastic way to finish the festival week. Lots of visitors throughout the day, poetry readings, presentation and readings for the competition winners, insight from the sponsors, an incredible gallery of artwork and poetry, drinks, celebrations, music, a harpist, a violinist and in the evening a band, a bar and a buffet! It was the sort of event you never want to leave.
This was a fantastic county competition for Art & Poetry with abundant entries and lots of judges deliberation. The exhibition featured high quality art entries (how the winners were ever decided is beyond me) and the poetry was exhibited in the Bevere Gallery cafe and beyond.
Each part of the programme was spaced out to allow gallery time and mingling in between. It was wonderful to have the opportunity to meet artists and poets who were inspired by our work. More on that later.
The celebration started with readings from poets who entered the Enough to See competition. There were more readers than I have photos for. I had to work and missed the very start of the event. I did catch up with some of the competition poets afterwards and it was a delight to hear how much this competition meant to them and how happy they were to discover such a supportive writing community. Worcestershire LitFest & Fringe has always supported the unsung as well as established creatives.
These were followed by a Reading from the Competition Winners. Martin Driscoll introduced the readings. As Former Worcestershire Poets Laureate Suz Winspear and I read our commissioned poems, followed by the winners: 1st Prize Rachel Porter, 2nd Prize Angela Lanyon, 3rd Prize Brian Comber.
Later on came the Presentations and Prize Giving for winning poets and artists. These were introduced by Susan Birth and presented by Maggie Keeble (Chair of The Arts Society Worcester- sponsors of the event) and Mark Robbins (WLFF).
Maggie Keeble presenting the winning artists: 3rd ‘Light as a Dragonfly’ by Sylvie Millen, 2nd ‘Transpired’ by Charli Farquharson and 1st ‘Woven Apertures’ by Sally Cartwright.
The poetry prizes presented by Mark Robbins (WLFF) to: 3rd Prize Brian Comber, 2nd Prize Angela Lanyon and 1st Prize Rachel Porter.
There were so many art entries that Yew Trees Artist Studios & Bevere Gallery released a list of Highly Commended:
‘ENOUGH TO SEE’ SHOWCASE – HIGHLY COMMENDED
There were quite a few more artworks in the competition than written submissions. So on the Artwork side, as well as the 1st, 2nd and 3rd prize winners, 5 ‘Highly Commended’ pieces were selected by Bevere Gallery and Yew Trees Artist Studios, clockwise from top left:
In the afternoon I was able to take another look around the exhibition and had the pleasure of seeing artwork inspired by all the poems. I didn’t seek out the artworks inspired by Aperture straight away, as I like to approach an exhibition space by space and then when I came across an area displaying artwork inspired by Aperture, I felt the tingle, that special moment of seeing it in real life.
The three dimensional real artworks were so different to the jpegs shared on social media – which are fabulous but can never capture the texture, colour or scale in true glory.
I have always loved art & galleries, so I was in my element. It was lovely to see lots of friends at the event as well as catching up with my artist, Jennifer Ng, talking to artists, meeting new people and securing some future projects. I actually feel a lot of my family would have enjoyed it, currently the plan is to collaborate again next year, so I may have a chance to take a carload of us.
INSPIRATIONS – The poem ‘Aperture’ by former Worcestershire Poet Laureate Nina Lewis was the inspiration behind THREE*! artworks in our exhibition: ‘Flight’ by Alison Griffin, ‘Burning Sky’ by Krisztina Cazes and ‘Like Ribbons through the Sky’ by Cherrie Mansfield.
Nina Lewis is one of the Directors of Worcestershire Litfest & Fringe.
*I actually inspired a 4th artwork – I met the artist, Katie Beasley who took just one word: luminosity to create her artwork: Luminosity Revealed – which was clever sculptural art which did indeed reveal light, depending on the angle of the display. Parts of the sculpture were designed to look completely different.
I met some of the artists responsible for artwork inspired by my poem. Katie Beasley took just one word. How magical a seed can be in the hand of a creative. And Krisztina spoke at length with me about her vase, the difference in one side to the other, the hint of light and the understory of my poem. It was great to meet them both.
Krisztina Cazes & her artwork Burning Sky.
The Exhibition was magnificent, captured here in a collection of photographs shared by Yew Trees Studio Artists. It spanned the entire site and visiting the 5 artists studios in the Bevere Gallery and Yew Trees was akin to visiting Santa in a Grotto as a toddler (if you enjoyed that sort of experience). It was fascinating also to watch many of them at work and to talk to them about their process.
Pictured above Susan Birth’s studio and artwork featuring Suz Winspear’s poem from a previous project and below inside Jennifer Ng’s studio. A vast wonderland of ink.
From here I ventured back out to the Foyer area and …
discovered this – which was a delightful moment – seeing an artist using a work produced by an artist who used your poem as a starting point, this was another great aspect of this project. The web of inspiration or ripples on water. Beautiful.
From Yew Trees I ventured over to Bevere Gallery to see more of the exhibition. This time I was with friends and we were on the hunt for the winning artworks. This is where I found Alison Griffin’sFlight. I didn’t take many photos as my mobile is about a decade out of date and offers half of that in pixels. I have borrowed these photos from Bevere Gallery, Visit Worcestershire and Birmingham Live to give you a flavour of the space we all happily inhabited for the day.
I also ventured upstairs to visit Richard Nicholls and Jane Arthur in their studios. It was lovely to speak to them and watch them work on their current projects for a while. Richard’s looked thoroughly captivating. Jane’s studio also housed Kathy Gee’s Poetry Film and Suz Winspear’s commissioned poem and artwork.
I visited the cafe to read the poems and politely make conversation with people drinking coffee and tea as I tried to take snaps around them.
The evening soiree/ Finale was spectacular too. A free bar and buffet with added music from violinist Susan Clark and Steve Soden’s band.
Swan Theatre Worcester The Moors Worcester WR1 3ED
What a fantastic Launch – I know we say it every year, but we really mean it! Martin Driscoll (LitFest Director) started proceedings with the new Lord Mayor of Worcester, Louis Stephen. It is great to have his support.
awritersfountain 