THE INKY SHEFFIELD WRITERS NEWSLETTER Jan / Mar 2004 No. 28 ______________________________________________________ INKY NEWS Free Manuscript Feedback This year Signposts are administering for the second year running a free read scheme for writers in Sheffield, in conjunction with NALD (National Association for Literature Development). The reads and feedback are provided by The Literary Consultancy (more details on the web, under that name), an organisation set up by the Arts Council for this purpose. The scheme is designed to give manuscript feedback from readers in the publishing industry, and those who submit manuscripts should expect a detailed response to their work. Applications should come from writers who are ready for such a response. People who sent work last year were very impressed and positive about the scheme. The idea is to use the free reads mostly for novelists, and short story writers, but there will be room for two or three poets as well. A free read for a full novel may be available if it isn't too long, but a synopsis and some sample chapters is more likely as then there will be more money left for other people. Priority for free reads should go to people who would have trouble affording the service otherwise. If you want to apply for a free read, please send an email to Matt Black (matt.black@pop3.poptel.org.uk) or a letter to: 51 Pearson Place, Sheffield S8 9DE, by February 7th, and give a rough idea of how much work you want to submit. The reads need to be undertaken shortly, and work will need to be sent off to The Literary Consultancy by February 14th. Matt will then let you know whether there are free reads left, how TLC would like the work presented etc.. Please email or ring Matt on (2554030) if there are any other questions. Signposts Launches New CD Signposts have just released their first CD "The Riddle Box", a compilation of poems written in response to on-air workshops run by Jan Caborn and Liz Barrett during their residency at Radio Sheffield as part of Year Of The Artist. The CD, which contains poems and songs by Ray Hearne, Jan Caborn and a collection of local writers from Sheffield and the surrounding area, was successfully launched on the 9th December at FOB coffee shop where many of the writers on the CD performed their work. We have produced an initial run of one hundred copies of the CD. After these are sold we will produce a second run of one hundred, the proceeds of which will go to Paul Gilbert to raise money for his daughter Eve who has CHARGE syndrome. The CD is available now by post from Signposts (address on the back page) at a cost of £6.00 including p&p. Please make Cheques payable to "Signposts" for the full amount. Bridlington Writing Weekend Here's another opportunity to experience a writing weekend in Bridlington. The writing course, put together by Liz Cashdan, is designed for both practised writers and beginners in prose and poetry. Participants will write, read to each other, discuss and use the outside world of town and sea as a stimulus for writing. The course runs from Friday 12th March to Sunday 14th March 2004 and costs £110. This includes everything except Saturday and Sunday lunch. Non-residential: £45. This includes Friday and Saturday evening meal. For more information on the Bridlington Writing Weekend contact: Liz Cashdan, 36 Sterndale Road, Sheffield, S7 2LD. Tel: 0114 236 8361 Email: elisabeth.cashdan@which.net Sheffield in Fact, Fiction and Film An informal and open lecture by David Fine. This lecture celebrates his revised Sheffield, History & Guide, just published by Tempus Publishing. David now works exclusively as a writer, with The Executioner's Art, a grim thriller set in Sheffield, marking his fiction debut in 2002. Currently he's working on a screenplay of its story commissioned by EM-Media. This illustrated talk will answer and pose questions about how Sheffield should intrigue historians and inspire other writers. A don't miss opportunity if the city evokes deep feelings in you. The lecture will be held at the Dep't of Archaeology, University of Sheffield, Northgate House, West Street on Thursday 5th February. 5.30 - 6.30 The lecture is free but there are limited seats so please contact the Department of Archaeology on 0114 2222900. World Mother Language Day Book Launch To celebrate World Mother Language Day the Bengali Women's Support Group will launch their new anthology Daughters of a Riverine Land at the Millennium Galleries in Sheffield. The book contains stories, poems, photographs & artwork by 33 women and girls and was edited by Debjani Chatterjee and Ashoka Sen. The launch, which will include readings from the book and Bengali "language movement" songs, takes place on Thursday 19th February at 4.45 pm. Entry is free and all are welcome Johnathon Clifford Appeal Johnathon Clifford, the campaigner against vanity publishing, is appealing for assistance from writers' groups' throughout the country. Johnathon has been campaigning since 1991 for truth and honesty in the vanity publishing world and has become recognised as the authority on the subject. His free Advice Pack for authors seeking a publisher, or who have experienced problems with a publisher, is available to anyone anywhere in the world simply by sending their postal address. It consists of sections on all forms of publishing including self-publishing, e-publishing, anthologies, short story broadcasting and - most importantly - finding a mainstream publisher. Working from a database of the postal addresses of writers' groups' throughout the country Johnathon has kept writers up to date with the latest advice and information. However, this has become far too expensive and time consuming and so an alternative must be found for this service to continue. The only way that Johnathon can continue this service is by sending the information via e-mail, a lot quicker and cheaper. To be able to do this is he is appealing for writers' groups' or other interested parties to provide him with an e-mail address. It is stressed that any contact details sent to him would not be passed on to third parties. Please send your e-mail addresses to: johnathon@vanitypublishing.info *(no co.uk required) More information from Johnathon's website: www.vanitypublishing.info New W.E.A. Course The W.E.A. (Workers Educational Association) has just started a new course - Under The City: Explorations In Urban Writing. The city offers a wealth of inspiration for writers. A place of memory, social identity, change, arrival, departure, rumour, secrecy and (urban) myth, it presents itself in literature in many ways. The course will enable learners to look at ways in which the city has been used for a variety of purposes by writers; there will be an opportunity to explore the city (physically, psychologically, emotionally) and consider ways of using it as a starting point for their own writing. Practical sessions (travelling around the city centre) will be combined with classroom-based discussion and writing activity. The search is on to find a way under the city's skin….. The course, based at the Scotia Works, Leadmill Road, started on the 15th January and runs on Thursdays 10.00 - 12.30 for twelve weeks. If you are interested call Rob Hindle, the course tutor, on 0114 2322714 to see if there are still places available on the course. Blood, Sweat and Beers Blood, Sweat and Beers Fifty two poems for £3.00 and "Cheaper than chips" according to the Sheffield Star! That's the selling point for Mike Hoy's new collection of poetry "Blood, Sweat and Beers." The 'Blood' section includes poems first published in Brequemard, Envoi, HQ, New Writer, The North, Orbis, Pennine Ink, Platform, Tears in the Fence, The Reader, Staple and Seam. Most of the gym poems in Sweat were also published in reputable magazines while the Beers section in er…well, less reputable magazines. The collection is available direct from Mike Hoy at: 2 Netherdene Road, Donfield, S18 1TR. Email: mikehoy@aol.com Please enclose a cheque for £3.00 A review of the collection should be appearing in the Inky in the near future. Scriberazone Wants You Scriberazone, who run an arts / literature site at www.scriberazone.co.uk, have just created an arts discussion forum on the site which will be used to exchange views about literature, visual arts, music, events and that sort of thing. Hopefully it will grow to become an excellent online artistic community where ideas can be interchanged. Scriberazone would appreciate it greatly if everyone could visit the discussion forum and get involved. When the community has grown to a suitable size they plan to have real-life meetings, events and suchlike. THE INKY INTERVIEW Staple Magazine was twenty years old last year. After being edited for many years by Don Measham and Bob Windsor, both Derbyshire-based, it acquired two new editors a few years ago - Ann Atkinson and Elizabeth Barrett, both well- known in local poetry circles. Ann Atkinson lives at Nether Padley, Grindleford, and Elizabeth Barrett lives in Walkley, Sheffield. Staple publishes prose fiction and book reviews as well as poetry, but Dave Sissons focussed on the poetry in a recent interview with Ann Atkinson. Has the editorial policy of Staple changed significantly since you took over from Don and Bob? For example is there a bias towards female writers, a question I put from having attended a presentation you gave at the Huddersfield Poetry Festival in 1995, when you discussed the bias against female writers in poetry magazines? There have been significant changes in Staple, some of which are very evident - design, paper quality, typeface, lay-out - and in terms of content we introduced articles and recently reviews. But the question you raise about 'bias towards female writers' does demonstrate that you didn't appreciate what I was saying at Huddersfield. Let me reiterate: women have always read male writers - we have grown up in a male world, are used to 'getting our heads around male issues', and have had no problem writing our A-Level essays, our university dissertations/theses, about the work of the great male writers. The problem is that many male readers have difficulty with markedly female writing. In my presentation at Huddersfield I used the term 'psychotransvestism' - change vest for language, themes, issues - and some men are just not comfortable 'getting their heads round' those strongly female poems. So if you check the publishers' lists (most publishers are men) you'll find evidence of a bias towards male writers. As editors of Staple we are most definitely not biased towards female writers, nor against male writers: we publish the poems which we enjoy, admire, are challenged by - whether they're written by male or female - but we are perhaps more democratic in that we are more comfortable with the female voice than are some male editors. Apart from the obvious - editors and contributors - who reads Staple? We sell Staple almost exclusively through subscription, and of the 500 copies of each issue we have printed, clearly only a small proportion go to our contributors. We have subscribers, institutional and individual, from the UK, Europe, the U.S.A., Australia and Asia. Our words get around. Big claims have often been made for the status of poets - unacknowledged legislators, people with heightened sensibilities, purifiers of the dialects of tribes, and so on. Let's be honest, at least in relation to a lot of contemporary practitioners - isn't a plumber of more use to society than a poet? What a dreadful thought, a society devoid of plumbers; certainly they're essential to the smooth running of our daily lives; but equally important are the electricians, gas-fitters, builders - not to mention solicitors, policemen, nurses, doctors, and what about farmers, food manufacturers - then of course, there are teachers - and let's not forget the architects, designers, musicians, artists, novelists…. I did have a plumber once with a sense of humour who recited a poem to me while she refitted my sink. She said she loved poetry at school, and had I been to the Carol Ann Duffy reading at the Showroom the other week, and wasn't it dreadful that Waterstones had cut their poetry shelves from four down to two. In a recent interview in The Big Issue, Ian Duhig said he strives to write poems that have three characteristics: musicality, accessibility and memorability. Would you agree that a lot of contemporary writers, either from deliberate policy or incapability, avoid all three? The terms Ian Duhig uses are subjective: I don't find his poems particularly musical, but presumably they fit his musical ear, and accessibility can depend on the reader's knowledge. Heaney's poems could be called accessible, but you might have to read up on some of his classical references to fully appreciate them. If you want poetry to be easy, then you're looking for anecdotes that scan, or homilies. Most contemporary poems could be written on the page as prose, couldn't they? After all, Baudelaire and Rimbaud weren't above it, readers wouldn't notice any difference, and it would save a lot of trees. First - use recycled paper, and yes, it's interesting to experiment with the prose- poem, but for many writers, the line is important. It's not just the white space around the poem that somehow 'floats' or frames the occasion of the poem, the arrangement on the page has something to do with the performance of the poem. Poetry is essentially an oral art: language is physically produced, and even the 'silent' reading from the page evokes a physical response - the rhythms, the breath, the muscular activity of the poem is 'felt' by the reader. The line breaks, the caesura, the space - all work as indicators of breath and rhythm. The line can also work by containing a thought, an idea, which might work by creating tensions, even contradictions; in this 'concrete' approach, the shape and space are essential to the poem. Is it coincidence then that so many writers at present find the three-line stanza and compulsive enjambment so ideal for the expression of their experience - or is it because Seamus Heaney uses those techniques a lot? I'm really not convinced that contemporary poetic technique merits the complex explanation you've given it. I think there's a lot of randomness about lines of poetry, a lot of trying to sound complex for the sake of it, and a lot of fashion too. I wonder who you're reading? I've just searched through a pile of recently- published collections and journals, and while there's evidence of some formally experimental poetry, and inevitably some poems that I strain to find a rationale for - by and large, I'd say the line's alive and well and doing its work. But I believe there has to be experimentation - there are clear parallels in music and the visual arts - and just because the medium of poetry is the same stuff that we use to write our shopping lists, our letters to the bank, and hear reporting an apparent truth in News Bulletins, doesn't mean we can't exploit the inherent layers and chains of meaning in language (even in what is apparently an autobiographical poem) and make statements, or signals about the art form through the presentation on the page. Finally, do you find Sheffield a hotbed of creativity or is it a Philistine stronghold? I know you live in Grindleford, but Nether Padley always makes me think of a bit of south-west Sheffield that has escaped through the Totley Tunnel. I do live in the bit of Sheffield that escaped through the Totley Tunnel - and here, within five minutes walk of my house, there are three published, practicing writers, two painters and several musicians - and I know there are similar actively creative people all over Sheffield - so certainly not a Philistinery. Maybe the writers need to come together more often - make contacts, enjoy each other's work - which is why Matt and Caroline's Bukowski's events are so good. Thank you to Ann Atkinson Interview by Dave Sissons WRITING GROUP NEWS Blue Moose in the Red Deer Another new poetry reading group, the Blue Moose Group is about to start at the Red Deer pub on Pitt Street. The Blue Moose group, which is being set up by Oliver Mantell, will meet on the 1st Wednesday of every month at 8.00 pm. The first meeting is on the 3rd of March and will be a lead in to decide in which direction the group should go. The more people who turn up for the first session the better and everyone is invited to take a poem or two along. If you would like more information or have any ideas to contribute before the first meeting please call Oliver on 07793 730250 NETWORX Writing Group - Doncaster Lorraine O'Reilly has taken over the helm of the NETWORX writers group in Doncaster and is keen to get other groups from Rotherham and Doncaster involved. NETWORX is a meeting place for northern writers and is based at The Point in Doncaster. Meetings are every six weeks, run from 10.30 to 4.30 with a break for lunch and usually feature a workshop with guest in the morning followed by shared readings in the afternoon. For more information contact L.V. O'Reilly Tel: 0114 2621214 or email lorraine@maddenl.fsnet.co.uk Women Writers Wanted A small and friendly group of lesbian writers in their forties are looking for new women to join their group. The group have been writing together for a number of years and use varied writing exercises, give and receive feedback on each others work, occasionally perform and, more importantly, have enormous fun! If you are interested in joining the group please contact Jan on 0114 2584157. ________________________________________________________________________ READING GROUP NEWS The St. James Street Reading Group is looking for new members to meet up with on the first Thursday of each month. This informal group meets at 2.00 until 4.00pm. If you are interested and would like more information then call Jenny King on 0114 2366225 The Waterstone's Sunday Reading Group meets once every month at the store in Orchard Square. They are always on the look out for new members and for reading suggestions. The meetings are held once a month at 2.00pm in the afternoon and if you would like more information then either ask in store or telephone: 0114 2728971 COMPETITIONS Rotherham Arts One-Act Play Writing Competition Entries are invited from aspiring playwrights for this competition, now in its 27th year. To encourage prospective entrants there will be a free workshop, arranged by Sheffield Hallam University, on Saturday 28th February at Rotherham Arts Centre, Walker Place, Rotherham. There is a first prize of £125.00 and two runner-up prizes of £75.00 each. Final adjudication and prize-giving will take place at a special performance of the three winning entries in early July. The entry fee is £5.00 per script and the closing date is the 31st March 2004. For an entry form and competition rules please contact Graham Rippon, 19 Godric Drive, Brinsworth, Rotherham, S60 5AN. Peninsular Spring Short Story Competition A 1st prize of £200.00 plus three runner-up prizes of £50.00 each. The top four stories will be published in the April issue of Peninsular Magazine and the readers will vote for first place. Entry forms and details from: Cherrybite Publications, Spring Competition, Linden Cottage, 45 Burton Road, Little Neston, Cheshire, CH64 4AE THE INKY QUESTIONNAIRE Robin Vaughan-Williams is a poet living in Sheffield. He organises Antics Upstairs, a spoken word night at the Red Deer pub, and is in the process of finishing off a PhD on the circle of the Russian philosopher and literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin in the 1920s. He is planning to launch a poetry website in the New Year, which will aim at establishing the caption competition as a poetic genre. What is your favourite book and why? I got really into John Agard's poetry last year, and his mythical characters like Limbo and Anancy. His poetry manages to encompass a great breadth of themes—historical, personal, and political—and it's fun, which I think is very important. But the book that has captivated me the most in recent years is The Tin Drum by Gunther Grass. It took me 6 months to read, during which time it wove itself into the fabric of my life, so it became a very personal book. If I looked back to earlier parts of the book I'd find they had become connected somehow with the things I was doing at the time, which I might otherwise have forgotten about…and sometimes distant chapters seemed to have more to do with episodes from my own life than with the section I was currently reading. And in a way that's exactly what happens in The Tin Drum with the main character's life and his perception of events, and the historical backdrop of twentieth-century Germany. What book would you prop open the door with? I have a four volume nineteenth-century Russian dictionary, which would do the job very nicely. I carted it all the way back from St. Petersburg before I discovered that it doesn't actually have any of the words I ever want to look up in it. What character in a book would you like to be? If Austin Powers were in a book I'd be him. Otherwise…. Professor Branestawm. What words do you overuse? I think I mispronounce words, rather than overuse them. Since September 2001, whenever I say 'tourism' it seems to come out more like 'terrorism'. Where is your favourite place in Sheffield? Kelham Island, the canal, and anywhere you can stand on Bonfire Night and see the fireworks exploding beneath you. What do you think Sheffield has given you as a writer? It's given me a home and a place to explore. I used to have the travel bug, but I've been here four years now and at the moment staying in Sheffield feels like more of an adventure than going anywhere else. When did you first acknowledge your own success? In my dreams. However the works of Mel C and Robbie Williams have inspired me to begin a book about the adventures of a character called Vongh: Just Vongh! The Story of a Future Star's Rise to Fame. Maybe my dreams will become fiction some day. If you would like to see a particular author featured in our Questionnaire send your suggestions to The Inky. Address below. THE OTHER ARTICLES Focus on…. Antics Upstairs @ the Red Deer Here is the first, of an occasional series, in which the Inky takes a closer look at a writing group or venue in the area. History: in its present form, Tom Stafford, who moved down to London in September 2003, started the spoken word night at the Red Deer around the end of 2002. It was initially known as Pirate Writers Unplugged, owing to a connection with a university based writer's network known as Pirate Writers, whose events tended to be dominated by music. It is now advertised as Antics Upstairs: Spoken Word at the Red Deer, and is run by Robin Vaughan-Williams. Type of work: Spoken word of any kind is encouraged, from poetry and stories to urban fairytales, beautiful lies, and 'found' literature, such as from dated magazines or the label on an eggbox. Be inventive! It is a good place for an audience, attentive and unintimidating. The atmosphere is informal and intimate, with no stage or microphone, and an open fire in winter months. Audience: The night attracts a diverse age range, mainly people in their twenties and thirties, but our more mature regulars are in their eighties. Anyone who wants to read or listen is welcome. Where: Antics takes place upstairs at the Red Deer pub on Pitt Street, which is just off Mappin Street. When: We gather from 8pm onwards for a 9pm start. Future dates are Tuesday 10 February and Tuesday 9th March 2004. Contact: For information about Antics and future events, contact Robin on 0114 258 7270, or email: . The connection between the Red Deer and poetry goes back a long way, here's some of the history. Among regulars at Antics Upstairs, there are one or two who say they have been going to poetry events at the Red Deer (est. 1870) on Pitt Street since the 1960s. In addition to the monthly spoken word night, a book club has been meeting there regularly for at least five years, and last summer a group of writers from TILL's (The Institute of Lifelong Learning) creative writing programme held workshops at the Red Deer every two weeks. A new poetry reading group will also be starting up soon. In the past, the Red Deer has been the venue for a succession of poetry nights. Hosts have included Matt Black, who kept it going for about ten years, and a group from Doncaster, who produced the anthologies Red Deer Anthology 1 and 2 (available in the Central Library). Sometimes the place was packed, with audiences of up to sixty squeezed in upstairs. Doreen Bottomley remembers people sitting on the floor when no seats were left. But at other times you'd go along and it'd be almost empty. The Red Deer's success as a poetry venue must be partly down to the atmosphere. The managers, Sam and Simon, who took over two years ago after having worked in Sheffield's Compass Theatre Company, see it as a friendly place that offers something a bit different to West Street. I remember the first time I heard a storytelling at the Red Deer, with just the fire for illumination, and feeling like I'd see the stars if I looked up. In a pub, with cigarettes and beer, it felt 'bohemian' and 'all-inclusive', recalls Terry Marshall. 'There were some great poets!' he adds. You might recognise the names of Wendy Richmond, Debjani Chatterjee, and Hilda Cotterill, who all made appearances at the Red Deer in the past. The information in this article comes from conversations conducted by Robin Vaughan-Williams with Terry Marshall, Doreen Bottomley, Samantha Richardson, and Oliver Mantell, between 22 and 25 January 2004. LISTINGS OF LIVE EVENTS In February THURSDAY 5th February Sheffield in Fact, Fiction and Film An informal and open lecture by David Fine. Free but limited number of seats,please contact: Dept of Archaeology, University of Sheffield, Northgate House, West Street. 5.30 – 6.30 Tel: 0114 222 2900 Sunday 8th February Waterstone's Sunday Reading Group The reading selection will be "Life of Pi" by Yann Martell. Waterstone's Bookshop, Orchard Square. Free. 2.00 pm start. Tel: 0114 2728 971 Tuesday 10th February Antics Upstairs @ The Red Deer Informal evening of spoken words - story telling, poetry, fairy tales and beautiful lies. The Red Deer, 18 Pitt Street, Sheffield. 8.00 for 9.00 start. Tel: 0114 258 7270 Saturday 21st February The Poetry Business Writing Days Morning games and exercises to inspire. Afternoon workshop to delve further. No need to book. £12 waged, £6 unwaged. The Studio, Byram Arcade, Westgate, Huddersfield, HD1 1ND. 10.15 – 4.15 Tel: 01484 434 840 Tuesday February 24th Waterstone's Events Simon Armitage will be reading from his new novel "The White Stuff" Waterstone's Bookshop, Orchard Square. Tickets £3. 6.30 start. Tel: 0114 2728 971 Tuesday February 24th, Bcuk Off at Bukowski's New Writers and Old: Students and Tutors from University of Sheffield Institute of Lifelong Learning reading new work. First Lines Quiz. Poetry Bookswap: bring a book of poems to swap with another. The Beer-Break Instant Poem Competition. Free 8.15 pm start Bukowski's Piano Bar Diner, 217-219 London Road, Tel: 0114 258 4700 In March Tuesday 2nd March The Sticky Bun Writers Club David Duncombe, 1st prize winner in a "Poetry Monthly" competition reads from the collection "Joy Rider." Fat Cat Pub, Alma Street. Free. 8.15 pm start. 0114 2366 225. Wednesday 3rd March Blue Moose Poetry Reading Group First meeting of a new poetry reading group, all welcome, bring along a poem or two to discuss. The Red Deer, 18 Pitt Street, Sheffield. 7.30 for 8.00 start. Tel: 07793 730 250 Tuesday 9th March Antics Upstairs @ The Red Deer Informal evening of spoken words - story telling, poetry, fairy tales and beautiful lies. The Red Deer, 18 Pitt Street, Sheffield. 8.00 for 9.00 start. Tel: 0114 258 7270 Saturday 13th March The Poetry Business Writing Days Morning games and exercises to inspire. Afternoon workshop to delve further. No need to book. £12 waged, £6 unwaged. 10.15 – 4.15. The Studio, Byram Arcade, Westgate, Huddersfield, HD1 1ND Tel: 01484 434840 Tuesday March 30th Bcuk Off at Bukowski's Two visiting Poets from London - Agnes Meadows and Nii Parkes. Free 8.15 pm start Bukowski's Piano Bar Diner, 217-219 London Road, Tel: 0114 258 4700 SHEFFIELD WRITERS RESOURCE CENTRE For information and advice Wednesdays 5pm - 7.30pm The Main Lending Library Surrey St, Sheffield, S1 For more info - 0114 2734711 (Sheffield Central Library) To be included on The Inky's Listings - Phone 0114 2634787 Email: signposts@lineone.net The Inky acknowledges support from: _________________________________________________________ The Inky is put together by Matt Black & Geoff Briggs The Inky is a sIgnpOstS Project. Please send contributions for the next issue to: The Inky SIGNPOSTS 4th Floor Furnival House, 48 Furnival Gate, Sheffield, S1 4QP, UK Phone Geoff on 0114 2634787 or email Signposts@lineone.net