Part of the attentive Poetry Swindon audience at The Sun Inn, Coate.
Swindon Literary Festival this is not, this is Swindon Festival of Literature.
As Matt Holland made clear in the inaugural Kaye Franklin Memorial Lecture, Literary Festivals are all about books; a Literature Festival is about writing, good writing.
Chronicler Milo (9) reports from Swindon’s teenage poetry competition, Youth Slam.
Chris Tutton
This was Chris Tutton’s second visit to Swindon. Six years ago he led a session in the Museum and Art Gallery.
Today [Friday 8 May 2015] he read from his new collection, Angles of Repose, and then offered up the stage to the audience to read their poems. Chris gave performance tips and advice.
‘Just let me know when I’ve read for 40 minutes’, he asked and began with talking muscles, dreams of the sea, off-the-cuff remarks, grown-up regrets, and magpie memories. His asides and introductions to the poems were funny and dry, I was never quite sure why he was telling us this stuff, then I’d find myself laughing. Continue reading
Carol Ann Duffy by Ben Phillips
So, that Carol Ann Duffy.
Poet Laureate for a few years (no it’s not Andrew Motion anymore. Or John Betjemen). Looks like a Serious Proper poet in the photos. In real life (and in her poetry) a wry humour and, although her words can be ‘deep’, she quite enjoys a frivolous heckle.
Her event was the finale of the fourth Marlborough Lit Fest last night, as she performed with John A Sampson – a musician who shares that wry humour with a huge streak of silliness. Continue reading
The great thing about being a chronicler is that on the one hand I can write whatever I like (as long as it isn’t defamatory and all the words are wrote proper) but on the other I feel part of the team.
So going to the Swindon Festival of Poetry launch today at Swindon Arts Centre was a chance to catch up with wordsmithing friends. Continue reading
Collectively writing
Is it nearly Christmas? I wrote a seasonally related poem at Matt Holland’s ‘Poetry and Life’ workshop on Tuesday, the final day of the Swindon Festival of Poetry.
I can’t take all the blame/credit. It was a joint effort. After reading and discussing other poetic works and how they tackle life – and how ‘language can free you and bind you’ – and how poetry differs to prose (‘Poetry can mean something different to what it says,’ said poet Robert Frost and ‘prose is obliged to mean what it says’ said Matt) we collectively tried our own work. Continue reading
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