SCOTTISH WRITERS' CENTRE EVENTS
GERRIE FELLOWS: Poetry Collage Workshop
Thursday 18 March at 7pm
CCA, Glasgow — ADMISSION FREE
This workshop, run by the poet Gerrie Fellows, will explore how the technique of collage can be used to incorporate a diversity of voices into a poem. Our lives are a confab of many different kinds of language: from the lists of everyday life to the jargons of technology; from the precision of medicine to the emotive word stock of place or plant names. The aim of this workshop is to find ways of playing with these sometimes conflicting languages, opening them up to the imagination.
GERRIE FELLOWS' fourth collection, Window for a Small Blue Child (Carcanet), is a sequence of poems about fertility treatment in which the language and images of medical technology interact with those of the body in the natural world. Described as 'an exciting and important book that extends the territory of poetry', it was shortlisted for the Sundial Scottish Poetry Book of the Year. New Zealand born, but long resident in Scotland, her earlier collections The Duntroon Toponymy and The Powerlines, brought together the voices and geographies of those two countries. In 2008-9 she was the first mentor for Glasgow's Clydebuilt Verse Apprenticeships.
GLASGOW VOICES
Thursday 8 April at 7pm
CCA, Glasgow — ADMISSION FREE
Peter Robertson, the Argentinian-based editor of international literary quarterly, will join the Scottish Writers’ Centre to celebrate the publication, in March, of his feature on ‘Glasgow Voices‘. Some of the contributors will be present to read from their poetry and fiction. Go to http://interlitq.org/ to access this very interesting e-magazine.
THREE MEXICAN POETS
Thursday 29 April at 7pm
CCA, Glasgow — ADMISSION FREE
2010 is the 100th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution. To mark the occasion, the Scottish Writers’ Centre will team up with St Mungo’s Mirrorball (Glasgow) and the Poetry Translation Centre (London) to present a trio of Mexican poets: Coral Bracho and David Huerta (who write in Spanish) and Victor Teran(who writes in Zapotec, an indigenous and endangered Mexican language). Coral is translated by Katherine Pierpoint & Tom Boll; David by Jamie McKendrick & Tom Boll; and Victor by David Shook. Expect an evening of readings and lively discussion!
For more information
http://www.scottishwriterscentre.org.uk/
ST MUNGO MIRRORBALL EVENTS
7.00 pm Thursday 29th April 2010
Clydebuilt 2 - Gillean McDougall • Val Thornton • Claire Quigley •
Lorraine Jenkins - The Poetry Club, Glasgow School of Art
7.00 pm Thursday 6th May 2010
This will be an evening showcasing the work of St Mungo's Mirrorball's Clydebuilt poetry apprenticeship scheme. The graduates from Clydebuilt 2 will be reading some of the work they have been developing over the twelve months of the programme. The apprentices reading will be Gillean McDougall, Val Thornton, Claire Quigley and Lorraine Jenkins. Another great night in store.
Aye Write in association with St Mungo’s Mirrorball
The Mitchell Library, 9th March - 13th March 2010
Several Aye Write events are being run in association with St Mungo’s Mirrorball. It would be great to have as much support as possible from Mirrorballers for these events in particular.
Alan Riach & Michael Schmidt
7.30 - 8.30 pm Tuesday 9th March
Mirrorballer Alan Riach’s Homecoming: New Poems 2001-2009 puts Scotland in touch with the wider world, finding common humanity at home and abroad. He will read with fellow Mirrorballer Michael Schmidt, Professor of Poetry at Glasgow University whose Collected Poems was called by John Ashberry, “...a passionate discourse that is at once earthly and numinous”.
Poets’ Corner open mic
6.00 - 7.00 pm Thursday 11th March
This is the annual opportunity for budding and established poets to read their own work. A wonderful opportunity to both contribute a reading and enjoy Glasgow’s diverse poetic voices.
Tom Leonard
7.30 - 8.30 pm Thursday 11th March
Tom Leonard reads from and talks about his new collected poems Outside the Narrative, described in The Guardian as “An unique body of work: terse, funny, unyielding and necessary”.
Don Paterson and Robin Robertson
3.30 - 4.30 pm Saturday 13th March
Two more of Scotland’s leading poets read from their work. Don Paterson’s most recent collection, Rain, won the 2009 Forward Prize and was described by Carol Ann Duffy as “...the best collection of poetry to appear in years”. Robin Robertson’s poem, ‘At Roane Head’ won the Forward Prize for best single poem in 2009. It appears in his newly published collection, The Wrecking Light, which The Guardian called “...a work of extraordinary visionary power, its music bleak and beautiful, spare and unsparing”.
In addition to the above partnership events, The Scottish Poetry Library will launch the
Best Scottish Poems
2009 (6.30 - 7.30 pm Sunday 7th March).
Among the readers will be Mirrorballer, Alexander (Sandy) Hutchison, who will be reading an extract from his long poem, ‘Setting the Time Aside’.
For more information
http://www.stmungosmirrorball.co.uk/
COMMUNITY WRITER/POET SESSIONS
Over the last year the Arts Development Section of Culture and Sport Glasgow have been offering writer/poet sessions across the 5 areas of the city to different creative writing and book groups. This programme of work has been made possible through partnership funding from Live Literature Scotland, with the aim to promote creative reading amongst different communities.
Some of the writers that have kindly facilitated sessions as part of this programme of work include: Bernard MacLaverty, Jess Smith, Margaret Thomson Davis, Laura Marney, John Binnie, Linda Strachan, Tom Leonard, Valerie Thornton and Tawona Aithole.
The writers have been warmly received and Arts Development is appreciative of support from colleagues in libraries, community learning and development, schools and other voluntary organisations for making this happen. We hope to develop this work further during 2010 with the possibility of linking in to the Aye Write Community Programme 2010.
For more information on this project contact the Literature Officer, Arts Development. Telephone: 0141 287 6411 or email arts.development@csglasgow.org
HOUR AFTER HOUR - CHRIS DOLAN
This publication is part of Glasgow's Cultural Pathfinder project for older people. The project has been about sparking interest in and widening access to the arts for people over 60 in Glasgow in initiating new dialogues around arts and age. This has seen older people as performers, artists, participants and audiences and also involved working across different generations, with older and younger people coming together through the arts. As the general population is ageing it feels increasingly important to explore more deeply what it means to grow older and look at how this might find expression here in Glasgow. This was the starting point for 'Hour After Hour', along with an interest in how a Glasgow based writer would approach the subject and how writing might reflect and challenge notions of age and growing older.
If you would like a copy of the book please email arts.development@csglasgow.org
Copies are available on a first come basis and only one copy per person is available.
WRITERS GROUPS
TOLLCROSS WRITERS GROUP
Farm Courtyard Workroom
Tollcross Park
254B Wellshot Road
Glasgow
G32 7AX
Meets Every Wednesday 2 p.m. - 4 p.m.
Secretary - Marc R. Sherland
Email tollcross@poets-writers.co.uk
Website www.tollcrosspark.com
LARKFIELD WRITERS' GROUP
Facilitator - Marc Sherland
Larkfield Writers' Group
Larkfield Centre
39 Inglefield Street
Govanhill
Glasgow
G42 7AY
Meets every Monday 1 p.m. - 3 p.m.
FREEDOM SPRING : TEN YEARS ON
A CELEBRATION AND COMMEMORATION OF TEN YEARS OF FREEDOM IN SOUTH AFRICA
This anthology of poetry and prose grew out of a desire to leave behind a lasting Glasgow legacy of the 10 years of freedom in South Africa and the many years of struggle against apartheid.
Glasgow has led the way in the support of Nelson Mandela, being the first Council to award the Freedom of the City to Mandela in 1981 while he was still imprisoned. Mandela himself praised Glasgow for its work against apartheid during his visit to the city in 1993.
This collection contains work from a broad range of Scottish and South African writers, with a preface by the distinguished South African writer Andre Brink. Featuring voices as varied as Desmund Tutu, Tom Leonard, Janice Galloway, Beverly Naidoo and Des Dillon, this book will entertain, inspire and challenge.
Edited by Catherine McInerney, former Glasgow City Council Literature Development Officer and Suhayl Saadi, award winning Glasgow-based novelist.
The publication of the book was funded by Glasgow City Council with assistance from the Scottish Arts Council.
Available from Glasgow City Museums Shops and Borders Books, Glasgow at £8.95