SI Leeds Literary Prize 2012

        Readers of the LitFest blog could well be interested in this prize, which is organised by Soroptimist International of Leeds. For more information click here. This is a recent SI news release:

Writers with new year’s resolutions to finish their novel and get it published are being encouraged to dust off their manuscripts and submit their entries to the SI Leeds Literary Prize.  This new award for unpublished fiction by Black and Asian women will be announced in October at the Ilkley Literature Festival, and potential entrants have until 1 June to submit their entries.

Prize judge Hannah Bannister, the Marketing Director at Peepal Tree Press, thinks it’s an exciting opportunity for women writers: “I know from my experience at Peepal Tree that writers sometimes need encouragement to take that first step and complete their manuscript, and that being shortlisted for a prize can change an author’s life.  I’m particularly keen to read the entries as the winner may get a publishing deal with Peepal Tree, as well as professional development support through our Inscribe programme.”

The award winning authors will also have the opportunity to perform their work at the prestigious Ilkley Literature Festival, where the prize will be awarded in October.  The winner will receive £2,000, with £750 to the runner-up and £250 as a third prize.  Entries can be submitted any time before 1 June and full details of how to enter are on the prize website: www.sileedsliteraryprize.com

Patrons supporting the prize are influential writers and thinkers with a significant public profile, and the prize team is delighted to welcome its latest Patrons, Bonnie Greer OBE and Bernadine Evaristo MBE.  Playwright and novelist Greer is a passionate advocate of diversity, and her works are concerned with the lives of minorities within majority cultures, particularly those of women.  British writer Evaristo was awarded the MBE for being ‘a major voice in the multicultural panorama of British literature’, and her novel-in-verse The Emperor’s Babe was chosen as a Times ‘Book of the Decade’ in 2009.

For further information, images or interview requests, please contact Fiona Goh, Project Manager, tel: 01422 435077 or e-mail: info@sileedsliteraryprize.com

The Dream and the Reality

Sally Bavage writes:

Our partnership event with the Irish Arts Foundation on Friday 2 March was a double bill which promised to be entertaining and thought-provoking – what the LitFest always aims for - and we were not disappointed.

Father O’Malley, I imagined,  would be a frailish man in his eightieth year.  Not a bit of it! He gave us a feisty view of the history of the movement to preserve the Irish language since the end of the Middle Ages, spiced up with recollections and anecdotes of his own part in its preservation.  He had subtitled his account of the rise and fall of the speaking of Gaelic as “the dream of the Gaelic League”, founded at the end of the nineteenth century after three centuries of decline, and “the reality of failed twentieth century government initiatives and minuscule funding” leading to Gaelic having an uncertain future in contemporary Ireland.

As early as the sixteenth century, the poet Brian Ó Gnimh was speaking about being adrift on a rising tide of English which reduced his words to the lonely call of seabirds:

I am the guillemot, the English the sea.

Reasons for the decline were many: Cromwell, colonisation by the English, some of whom insisted their labourers and their families spoke English, the Great Potato Famine, lack of employment opportunities ...  all conspired to confine Gaelic speaking to outlying areas, in some cases within a generation. Although the Gaelic League made good progress up to 1916, speaking the native language also fed the aspirations of the republican freedom movement, which led to government support being mealy-mouthed and inconsistent.

Father O’Malley gave us an entertaining account of his part in the setting up of a pirate radio station that confronted those who said it was technically impossible.  Quite a turbulent priest indeed.  Now there are thriving TV and radio stations which broadcast in Gaelic. Forty years ago, those who refused to pay a licence for English-only broadcasts only in English were jailed.  However, in uncertain economic times, the progressive strategy to support the acquisition and the use of the native language is in doubt.

Irish literature is published by two key publishing houses, who provide volumes of stories, short stories and poetry, and who support modern young poets as well as more traditional forms.  The Queen spoke in Gaelic in 2011 on her visit to the country, which has given a fillip to the movement determined to hold back the tide of cultural globalisation through TV, radio and news media that threatens to swamp the resurgence of Ireland’s native language. Food for thought indeed.

For the second half of the evening we were delightfully entertained by Dylan Bible on guitar and Amanda Fardy’s vocals as they explored traditional themes of life, love and loss using some modern interpretations of old Irish airs.  It was Trad meets Blues meets Burt Bacharach through haunting melodies and piercing words. 

A truly enjoyable evening exploring the voices of Ireland!  If the definition of an elegy is ‘mourning or expressing sorrow for that which is irrecoverably past (and you like to play upon words) then our evening was Gaelic to elegiac – almost.

Below, Father O’Malley

From Headingley to Oxford

Former Headingley resident Nicolette Jones took part in the first Headingley LitFest: she talked about her terrific book The Plimsoll Sensation. You can find out more about it here

She is now the main moving force behind the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival, and sends us her best wishes...

If you have an appetite for even more munching on literary matters after the Headingley LitFest, you might like to get yourself down to Oxford, where there will be three hundred events, including a children's programme with fifty-nine authors and illustrators.  www.oxfordliteraryfestival.org

James Nash at The Bowery

Headingley resident and poet James Nash has contributed to every LitFest so far, and will be around for the current one as well. He is also running a six-week creative writing course at The Bowery (54 Otley Road) from 1 March to 19 April at a cost of £55. The phone number is 0113 224 2284 and the email is info@thebowery.org

Valley Press has just told us that they will be publishing James's 63 Sonnets in the autumn.

He writes:

Starting on 1 March, I’ll be doing six weeks of taster writing workshops [poetry, short fiction, memoir, writing from life] between 7pm and 9pm which could well continue for another six weeks, and so on, we hope….

Everything we do will be pertinent to the writing process, with chances to share work and get feedback. We will also talk about publishing and performance possibilities for those who might be interested.

You can be a beginner or more experienced, the sharing of experience and discoveries will make it very exciting.

Contact Sandra at The Bowery to register your interest.

http://www.jamesnash.co.uk/blog/

Love's Lingo in the HEART café

Richard Wilcocks writes:

Love's Lingo, a preliminary - or if you like interim - LitFest event in the café of the HEART building on Bennett Road on Friday evening was a wonderful and very substantial taster for the full banquet to come. Becky Cherriman, the blue angel of the evening, delivered slices of heightened reality to an appreciative audience. She spoke truths about relationships close-up into our ears, intimacies conveyed in a conversational style. For me, there was just a touch of Angela Carter in her rhythmic scrutinies of old loves and fresh loves, fading pains and lasting pains.

Her poetic guest was Clare Neruda, a talented newcomer and similarly confessional: it was heartwarming to watch and listen as her confidence grew during her session, until she had us gripped. Her musical guests were Maggie 8, a duo which finished the evening beautifully.

Becky Cherriman will be with the LitFest again on Tuesday 20 March at 1pm for The Lingo of Food. The Workers Educational Association, in partnership with Osmondthorpe Resource Centre for adults with physical disabilities, and supported by Headingley LitFest, will be reuniting two creative writing groups for a delectable literary performance. She will be with both of them as facilitator.

About food - it's certainly delectable in the HEART café, and the atmosphere is just right for poetry and music. There will be more LitFest stand-alone events like this in future.

www.beckycherriman.com

Talking Myself Home - with Ian McMillan

Note it in your Filofax, tap it into your iPhone or ball-point it into the palm of your hand - just don't forget the date and time, which is 16 March at 7.30pm, and the place with the pulpit still in it - Left Bank Leeds, the old St Margaret of Antioch Church on Cardigan Road.

You are being given the opportunity to experience the phenomenon which is Ian McMillan, who will be performing his acclaimed verse autobiography in Headingley! Ian is poet-in-residence for English National Opera, The Academy of Urbanism and Barnsley FC. He presents The Verb every week on BBC R3 and appears regularly on Pick of the Week, Quote Unquote, The Arts Show, Just A Minute, You & Yours, Fry’s Planet Word, Have I Got News For You and next spring, Coast.

He’s Yorkshire TV’s Investigative Poet and Humberside Police’s Beat Poet. He was recently castaway on Desert Island Discs and featured with his Orchestra on The South Bank Show. His rip-roaring poetry shows are legendary. Cats make him sneeze.

‘The John Peel of poetry’ Alec Finlay


‘Jovial Poetic Troll’ Mark Radcliffe


'It cleared me chest something wonderful' Theatre By The Lake, Kendal


'One of my all-time heroes  -  he’s such a talented bloke, I could kill him’ Mike Harding


'Ian McMillan proved himself the ultimate spoken word artist, in that he was never at a loss for them – spoken or otherwise. His show Talking Myself Home was a dazzling combination of finely-honed poems and stand-up’s repartee. When the audience weren’t savouring his metaphors (in a Wish-I’d-Written-That way), they were shrieking with laughter. And what more could you want from a poetry show?' Apples'n'Snakes

Photo of Ian McMillan by Kippa Matthews:

7.30pm Left Bank Leeds (St Margaret of Antioch Church), Cardigan Road

£10

www.ian-mcmillan.co.uk
http://www.leftbankleeds.org.uk/