THE INKY The Inky Writers Newsletter Summer 2007 No. 41 INKY NEWS Doncaster Cultural Festival Every July a corner of Doncaster comes alive with a wealth of colour and excitement for Doncaster Cultural Festival, and it’s free to everyone! This year’s Doncaster Cultural Festival plans to be bigger and better than ever with live music, drama, dance, poetry, crafts, carnival, choirs and photography plus stalls offering food from all corners of the world. Organised by Doncaster Voluntary Arts Network (DVAN), the Cultural Festival is an opportunity for you to meet local voluntary art and cultural groups. Among those groups there will be various literature groups from the Doncaster area, here are just a few: Creative Writer UK - a non profit magazine, which promotes its members work and encourages all to do more with their creative writing. Rossington Writers - A group of people interested in creative writing, exchanging ideas and giving encouragement to one another. Doncaster & White Rose Poets’ Guild - The Poets Guild exists to encourage and promote the writing of poetry by anyone with an interest. Juan Pablo Jalisco's Theatre of Verse - A newly formed theatrical performance company with the aim of reviving the traditional art of the 'balladeer' by combining traditional drama/comedy with the romance of poetic verse. Poets, actors, and backstage volunteers all welcome. Everyone is welcome to come along, enjoy the day and see the variety of activities and arts groups that exist within the Borough. The event takes place on Sunday 15th July in The Arts Park, between The Point and the Museum on Chequer Road, Doncaster and starts at 1.00 pm. For more information: Phone (01302) 862398 Website: www.doncastervoluntaryarts.net Writing Group News Here are some more writing groups which are up and running. They are ready and waiting to welcome new members. Darnall Daytellers This group meets at Darnall Library, Britannia Road, Sheffield on Mondays between 2.00 pm—4.00 pm. If you are interested in poetry, short stories or drama then Darnall Daytellers may be the group for you. Contact Roy Blackman on Tel: (01709) 377097 for more information. The Chantry Writers Group These meet at Nellie Dean’s pub in the centre of Rotherham on Fridays between 1.00 pm—3.00 pm. If you are free at that time and would like to join forces with other Rotherham writers then please call: Margaret Simons Tel: (01709) 543991 Sheffield Writers’ Club 50th Anniversary Celebrations are in the air for the well established Sheffield Writers’ Club who have just moved to their new venue at the Circle, on Rockingham Lane in Sheffield. The group are always on the look out for new writers and now is a good time to join, while the corks are still popping! They meet every 2nd Monday between 6.00 pm - 8.00 pm and for more information call the Secretary - Phone: (0114) 2810609 Signposts news …… We’ve just moved in to new premises in Sheffield and we are now in the process of planning a new program of workshops and surgeries, to keep informed of these make sure that you subscribe to the Inky (subscription details at the end of this newsletter). Here are our new contact details, please add them to your address book: Signposts Writing Development Project, The Circle, 33 Rockingham Lane, Sheffield, S1 4FW. Email: info@signpostssouthyorks.org.uk Phone: 0114 2536722 New to the Inky Newsletter? If you’ve picked this copy of the Inky Newsletter up at one of the festivals or come across it while browsing the net then you may not know that it is produced by Signposts Writing Development Project. We’re here to help support and develop creative writing at all levels throughout the South Yorkshire area and if you write, or would like to, then we’re here for you. We run various projects throughout the area including workshops, surgeries, writer’s resource centres and this, The Inky Newsletter. The Inky is published four times a year and includes news on many creative writing opportunities, courses, grants, competitions, interviews, live listings and much more. And, best of all, it’s free! If you would like to subscribe to the Inky then all you need to do is send your name and address to the Signposts address and we’ll post it out to you as and when we publish each new issue. The Inky Interview with Seni Seneviratne Seni Seneviratne is a writer, singer, photographer and performer. She was born in Leeds, Yorkshire, in 1951 to an English mother and Sri Lankan father. She has been writing poetry since her early teens and was first published in 1989. Wild Cinnamon and Winter Skin, Seni’s first poetry collection, has just been published by Peepal Tree Press. Can you remember the moments when you first responded positively to poetry and when you first started to write poetry under your own initiative? When I was at school from the age of 14 or 15, I started writing poetry to express the angst of adolescence and feelings about injustice and poverty. I was very interested in the war poets – Sassoon, Owen. I still have a large hard-backed book from those days where I copied out poems in long hand. Your father's family came from what was Ceylon and is now Sri Lanka. In the poem, Lena Rulak, which is about your paternal grandmother, you call her 'daughter of a lawyer,/ Eurasian Burgher'. Did the process of migration involve something of a class sea change from Ceylonese middle class to Yorkshire working class? The class sea-change as you call it started before then. Colonisation placed my grandfather’s family in a low status in relation to the British, though they came from ancestry that was relatively high caste. My great-grandfather was a Mudliyar in the British administration. My grandfather’s marriage to my grandmother challenged the existing social hierarchy as she was a Burgher with Dutch ancestry. He married out of his class then, and both of them faced disapproval from their families. When she died my grandfather travelled to England and married a working class woman from Yorkshire, so he was located in that community. My father stayed with her family and grew up in a working class community and married my mum who was from a working class family. Despite short visits to Sri Lanka, you've spent most of your life in Yorkshire, either Leeds or Sheffield. Do you have any affinities with Yorkshire writers, for example poets like Ted Hughes, Tony Harrison and Simon Armitage, or prose writers like Keith Waterhouse, Barry Hines, J. B. Priestley and Richard Hoggart? My writing is rooted in Yorkshire as well as my experiences of growing up here. My poems reflect this, as well as my personal journey as a Yorkshire woman of mixed racial heritage. In my collection, I combine poems about my family history, my childhood memories, my search for identity, my personal journey, my loves and losses, my celebrations and my outrage. Of course, the places where you are born and grow up have a strong influence on your life and therefore your writing but in the same way as I don’t want to be pigeon-holed as a black writer or a woman writer, I feel that Yorkshire writers are writers first and Yorkshire folk second. In the poem, Ont' Safe Side, you write in a Yorkshire dialect. Isn't there a big problem about this because Yorkshire dialect is usually based on stress and replaces the articles with glottal stops? The line, 'She'd remember tale our mam told us about thunderbolt', would probably be read incorrectly by a Standard English speaker or someone who's learned English as a second language, though it wouldn't present any problems to someone from the Sheffield or Leeds region. And is it possible, in these days of facetious media celebrities, to write a poem in dialect and be taken seriously? I hope so but I wouldn’t want to only write in dialect. This is a very particular poem for me in the voice of my grandmother. It conveys authenticity in this instance to write the poem in dialect. Though I have a strong Yorkshire accent, it would not feel authentic for me to write all my poetry in this way, as my voice is more complex. There are traces in it not only of the West Yorkshire dialect but Liverpudlian and a South Yorkshire dialect. Another poem, Last Visit to the Hospice, uses an unrhymed villanelle form - very effectively, I think, in view of its theme of terminal illness and fate closing in on the life of someone close to you. Do you find that the traditional forms which dominated English poetry from around the fourteenth century to the late nineteenth/early twentieth centuries still give poetry a power of expression which is lost in more 'vers libre' practices? I didn’t have a formal English literature education beyond A-level and my experience of English A-level as it was taught in the 1960s turned me away from traditional forms and towards free form. More recently I find myself returning to more traditional forms of verse, experimenting with them and using them to enhance and develop my work. I don’t think it is a case of either, or. Different forms can provide the structure I need for different poems. You've been influenced by the feminist revival which reached the UK around 1969/70. Has this meant that you have tended in the past to avoid the influence of 'Dead White Males' (Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, etc), and, if so, have you had any cause to reassess this position in more recent years? I was never the kind of feminist who fell into easy slogans or fundamentalist dogma. I survived the dogma of Catholicism and was not about to let any other belief system or political movement dictate to me what I should or shouldn’t do. I read what I read because of what the person is saying and how well they say it, not because of gender or whether they’re alive or not. I am proud to have survived as my unique self against all the pressures to define and label me in some way or other and I respect others who have done the same. Thanks to Seni Seneviratne ~ Interview by Dave Sissons ks//New Books//New Books//New Books//New Books//New Books//New Books//N To prove once again that you can live in South Yorkshire and be a successful writer, here are two new books from local writers which have just been published. The first, from writer Daniel Blythe, is called “THIS IS THE DAY” (Allison & Busby, £10.99). The novel is described by the publishers as a “bittersweet rollercoaster” - what does that mean? You’ll have to buy the book to find out. The second book, titled “OVERCOMING EMOTIONAL ABUSE”, is the latest in a series covering health issues from local writer Susan Elliot-Wright. Psychological, verbal and emotional abuse may not cause broken bones or black eyes, but when one person persistently inflicts severe mental pain on another by the use of fear, intimidation, humiliation and manipulation, the damage can be just as serious. Susan Elliot-Wright explores the nature of this often subtle manipulative behaviour, and what can be done to break the cycle. As well as offering emotional support, the author looks at the practicalities that may be involved, such as consulting a solicitor or gaining access to benefits. The book is published by Sheldon Press and costs £7.99. Competitions National Poetry Competition 2007 The Poetry Society’s National Poetry Competition is now 30 years old and is still the biggest poetry competition of its kind. Its reputation spans the globe and previous winners include both published and unknown poets. Poems can be on any subject and there’s a prize total of £7,000. For more information have a look at the website: www.poetry-festival.com or call them for an entry form: Tel: 0845 4581743 The Rotherham One Act Play Writing Competition 2008 The biennial Rotherham One Act Play Competition will be held again for 2008. Writers resident in or regularly working in South Yorkshire, North Nottinghamshire, or North Derbyshire are invited to enter the competition. Closing date for entries is 31 March 2008, cost of entry £5 per script. Performance of the four winning plays will take place in September 2008. For more information and entry forms for the 2008 competition please contact: Rotherham Arts Literature & Drama Panel, c/o Graham Rippon, 19 Godric Drive, Brinsworth, Rotherham, S60 5AN Please send an SAE Forwords Bulletin forwords is a bi-weekly email bulletin, offering a digest of information about poetry and spoken word events, workshops and other literary events in Sheffield and the surrounding area (including Doncaster, Barnsley, Huddersfield, and Rotherham). More info? Visit this page: http://spacers.lowtech.org/forwords/ Problems with the Post? Following the mail out of the last Inky we’ve had a few complaints, particularly from the Doncaster area, of Royal Mail charging a fee due to the use of larger envelopes than the stamp allows. We would like to offer our apologies to these people but would like also to add that it’s not our fault! Someone has been posting our newsletters on to names from a mailing list - we don’t know who has done this, but we’re sure their mistake was unintentional. We are confident that we are using the correct postage. However, if you have been charged for this reason please do contact us and we will be happy to reimburse you for this charge. Please leave your contact details on our answer machine. LIVE LISTINGS 9th July - Access Poetry Barnsley – Monthly Poetry Group. 7.00-9.00 pm Emmanuel Church, Huddersfield Road, Barnsley. Tel (01226) 381084 10th July - Antics Upstairs – Performance from Eleanor Rees + poetry & words galore. 8.00 for 8.30 pm start. The Red Deer, 18 Pitt St, Sheffield. Tel: (0114) 2587270 14th July - Barnsley Writers Resource Centre – Free information & advice on all aspects of writing. 11.00-1.00 pm Central Library, Shambles Street, Barnsley. Tel (0114) 2536722 15th July - Doncaster Cultural Festival - Free music, drama, dance, poetry and much more. 1.00-5.30 pm. The Arts Park, Chequer Road, Doncaster. Tel (01302) 862398 21st July - Poetry Business Writing Day – poetry workshops with exercises & inspiration. 10.15 – 4.15 The Studio, Byram Arcade, Huddersfield. Tel (01484) 434840 22nd July - Opus Unplugged - Performance from poets, speakers & players. 8.00 pm Riverside Café, 1 Mowbray Street, Sheffield - info email: mail@opus-productions.co.uk 28th July - Writers’ Readaround - Your chance to join in and be heard. The Gardeners Rest, 1.00 - 4.00 pm. 105 Neepsend Lane, Sheffield, Tel: (01709) 377097 30th July - Sheffield Writers Club - Writing group (meets every fortnight). 6.00-8.00 pm The Circle, Rockingham Lane, Sheffield. Tel (0114) 2810609 * Last notes….. Many of the groups listed above will meet throughout the summer, if you are in any doubt contact the organisers to see just what is happening. July is the end of the academic year for a lot of the writing courses in South Yorkshire but it’s also the time to start thinking about joining a new course in September. A lot of the WEA courses become full very quickly but there are others which have just two weeks to get a sufficient number of people on to their register. If they don’t, the class is cut and your choice in subsequent years gradually diminishes. To preserve the number of writing courses in South Yorkshire keep a lookout for the WEA brochures (usually in local libraries), make your choice and register your interest before the September start. We always welcome entries for our listings page - If you have anything that you want us to include then please send us the details Barnsley Writers Resource Centre For free information and advice 2nd Saturday each month 11.00 am - 1.00 pm. The Central Lending Library, Shambles Street, Barnsley For more info - Tel: (0114) 2536722 Sheffield Writers Resource Centre For information and advice Wednesdays 5.15 pm - 7.30 pm The Central Lending Library Surrey St, Sheffield, S1 For more info – (0114) 2536722 To be included on The Inky’s Listings - Email: info@signpostssouthyorks.org.uk or contact Geoff at the address below. The Inky acknowledges support from: The Inky is a Signposts project - Signposts Writing Development Project www.signpostsonline.org Please send contributions for the next issue to: SIGNPOSTS The Circle 3rd Floor 33 Rockingham Lane Sheffield S1 4FW For more information - Phone Geoff Briggs on 0114 2536722 or Email: info@signpostssouthyorks.org.uk If you would like to receive a hard copy of The Inky then please contact us at the above address, we will need your address details and your permission to keep your details on our database. If you wish to receive the email version of the Inky we will require your email address together with your permission to keep your details on our database. *Please note* - The hard copy of The Inky may well precede the e-version by a number of weeks and some articles may be out of date by the time the e-version is received. *************************************************