Headingley LitFest: May 2013

Monday, 13 May 2013

We Are Poets - on Youth Fringe Day at HEART

We've had plenty of enquiries about Alex Ramsayer-Bache's film We Are Poets, so here's a set of links which might help you. Why not start with this YouTube interview in which Alex is interviewed? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hkqtBYlIVs

Keep Saturday 29 June free! The day starts at 1pm.

USEFUL LINKS:

Official website: www.wearepoets.co.uk

Twitter: http://twitter.com/WeArePoets

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/We.Are.Poets.Film

Brave New Voices & Youth Speaks: http://youthspeaks.org/

ARTICLES / REVIEWS:

Little White Lies: http://www.littlewhitelies.co.uk/theatrical-reviews/we-are-poets-20950

Screen International: http://www.screendaily.com/reviews/the-latest/-we-are-poets/5043646.article?blocktitle=Latest-Reviews&contentID=1479

The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/the-northerner/2012/apr/04/leeds-young-authors-wearepoets-poetry-slam-arts-council?CMP=twt_gu

Front Row Reviews: http://www.frontrowreviews.co.uk/reviews/we-are-poets-review/17446

Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/julian-benson/we-are-poets_b_1632672.html

Bradford Film Festival: http://itpworld.wordpress.com/2012/04/21/biff-2012-1we-are-poets-uk-2011/

We Are Poets talking points for schools/education: http://englishpgcme.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/we-are-poets.html

http://baroqueinhackney.com/2012/12/09/we-are-poets/

Cineuropa: http://www.cineuropa.org/nw.aspx?t=newsdetail&l=en&did=222815

Zofia Walczak: http://zofiawalczak.wordpress.com/2011/10/03/documentary-film-review-we-are-poets-alex-ramseyer-bache-daniel-lucchesi-2011/

Wednesday, 1 May 2013

Congratulations, George Szirtes!

Hungarian-born poet George Szirtes’ In the Land of Giants, illustrated by Helen Szirtes and published by Salt, has won the 2013 Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE) Poetry Award.
The annual award, established in 2003, encourages and celebrates outstanding new poetry for children.

In the Land of the Giants, which includes poems translated from Hungarian, centres on a series of poems in which characters feel small and insignificant in a big world.

George was a contributor to the recent LitFest. In the picture, he is talking to poet Kim Moore. Read the review here.

LITERARY HEADINGLEY

Headingley is just the place for it! Don't expect a big circus with marquees, though: we're not at that stage yet. We're all volunteers as well.

Our venues include the HEART Centre on Bennett Road, the New Headingley Club on St Michael's Road, friendly cafés, historic local cinemas, Headingley Library, people's houses and the historic Leeds Library in Commercial Street, city centre.

Headingley's Literary Links

Headingley has strong connections with many writers:

Arthur Ransome was born in Headingley, J R R Tolkien lived at 5 Holly Bank and also at 2 Darnley Road, West Park when he was reader in English Language at the University of Leeds 1920 - 25, Alan Bennett lived over a butcher's shop opposite the Three Horseshoes, now Royale Dry Cleaners.

Lucy Newlyn has published poetry about her early life in Headingley, George Orwell stayed at 21 Estcourt Avenue with his sister Marjorie and her husband Humphrey 'Humpy' Dakin (with whom he visited the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth), T S Eliot used to visit his mother-in-law in Weetwood Lane, William Fryer Harvey was brought up in Spring Bank, Trevor Griffiths lived just off Victoria Road on Winstanley Terrace, Jon Silkin's first office of STAND magazine was his flat at 144 Otley Road, Sir Geoffrey Hill lived in Shire Oak Road, Peter Redgrove lived in Headingley between 1962 and 1965 when he was Gregory Fellow of Poetry at the University of Leeds, and playwright Kay Mellor still lives near The Hollies in Far Headingley.

Wilson Barrett, the charismatic first manager of the Grand Theatre, Leeds (a prolific playwright as well), lived in Beech Grove Terrace, Woodhouse in the 1870s. His house was a meeting place for many writers, artists and visitors to Leeds - such as W. S. Gilbert, George Grossmith and Atkinson Grimshaw.

Headingley LitFest 2020 was the thirteenth. The fourteenth will take place from March 2021 and will be adapted to the rules of the Covid pandemic. We are now a proud part of the annual Leeds Lit Fest.