Great picture of the Gloucestershire Writers’ Network competition winners and judges at the Cheltenham Literature Festival event this month.
Iris Lewis ( far left) and Derek Healy, of Cirencester’s fellow writers’ group Catchword, (centre back) were runners up in their category.
Stephen Connolly has made a new recording of his radio play ‘Sky Pilots’. The original BBC Recording could not be broadcast on Corinium Radio, for various legal and financial reasons, so he has made a new recording with Cheltenham’s Alice Vellender and David Lloyd.
The play will be broadcast on Corinium Radio on the following dates:
Monday 29th Oct @10-30pm
Thursday 1st Nov @6-00pm
Saturday 2rd Nov @ 11-00am
Or if you really can’t wait, you can listen to it here:
The latest edition of The Curlew, the print periodical dedicated to writing and illustration celebrating the natural world, features ‘Wordsmiths’ , a poem by Frank McMahon.
Each quarterly edition is named after a tree and features black and white illustrations. The latest, ‘Fagus’ (beech) also includes work by the artist Peter Randall-Page and the poet Jane Lovell.
Frank’s poem opens with these lines:
Letters inscribed in air; branches
write the seasons and their fickle
variations, shredding coherence
as they thresh and whine, blasts and rants
of leaves and barren seeds.
The Curlew does not pay for work but it is collected by the UK National Poetry Library, the British Library and the National Library of Wales.
Proceeds are donated to wildlife charities such as the Cheetah Conservation Fund and The Born Free Foundation. It welcomes contributions of creative non fiction, poetry artwork and photography and involves young people with a special section called “Sanderlings”.
Click here for more information.
To submit work info@the-curlew.com
Armistice Centenary
This year is the hundredth anniversary of the end of the First World War. To mark the occasion, Somewhere Else Writers are broadcasting ‘Beyond the Pale’, a play which centres on the effect of the War on ordinary people, both at the time of the conflict and the long shadow it cast over the rest of the twentieth century. The story is told chiefly through the medium of letters. Writer Iris Anne Lewis was inspired to write this play by the Great Western Railway War Memorial at Paddington station. The dominant feature of the memorial is a large bronze statue of a British First World War soldier dressed in battle gear, wearing a helmet, woollen scarf, and a greatcoat draped over his shoulders. The soldier is looking down, reading a letter from home.
Letters to and from the battle fields were an important part of the war effort. Some, of course, were official letters but many were personal and vital in maintaining morale. Up to 12 million letters a week were delivered to soldiers, many on the front line. it took two days for a letter to reach the front. Its journey began at a specially built sorting depot at Regent’s Park. By the end of the War two billion letters and 114 million parcels had passed through it.
‘Beyond the Pale’ will be broadcast on Corinium Radio at 4.30pm on Sunday 28th October. If you miss the broadcast it will be available on Corinium Radio’s ‘Listen Again’ feature and in the ‘Broadcasts’ section of this website.
Stephen Connolly’s monologue ‘Nosferatu’, previously performed at the Gloucester Citizens event in Gloucester earlier in 2018, will be performed again at the Cockpit Theatre, London in November 2018.
Bashir Productions’ Creative Collisions is an industry showcase comprising monologues and scenes, written by a variety of wonderful up and coming writers and featuring colourful, dynamic characters. There will be two performances on Tuesday 27th November at 2pm and 7pm.
Somewhere Else Writers are heavily featured in the latest edition of Graffiti Magazine available now.
Graham Bruce Fletcher’s story ‘The Scent of Darkness’ won the short story section and the poem ‘A Ghost of a Girl’ by Iris Anne Lewis won the poetry competition. Clare Finnimore’s story ‘The Revenge of Chesil Beach’ was highly commended.
Two of our writers – Stephen Connolly and Graham Bruce Fletcher – have stories in the new Stroud Short Stories Anthology due to be launched on Friday 28 September between 7.00 and 10.00pm at the Ale House in John Street, Stroud, GL5 2HA.
The Anthology, which covers the last six, twice-yearly Stroud Short Story events, has 57 stories by 45 Gloucestershire authors. It runs to 254 pages and costs £10. The evening is free and unticketed.
More information, including how to reserve a copy and a full list of all 45 authors in the Anthology, is here.
Do tune into Corinium Radio on Thursday October 4th to hear a play inspired by Gloucestershire martyr William Tyndale.
‘Death in Flanders ‘ is written by chair of Somewhere Else Writers Frank McMahon and was inspired by a stop at the Tyndale Monument near Wootton-Under-Edge.
“Suddenly I remembered Melvyn Bragg’s TV documentary and a wonderful play by David Edgar, Written on the Heart, which has some very powerful scenes involving Tyndale. I decided that I must find out more and discovered a very detailed and moving biography by Professor Daniell.
“It revealed not just a story of the turbulence of the Reformation, religious intolerance, his exile and courage. It showed both his prodigious scholarship and the way he used the English language to make his translation of the Bible accessible and memorable. His work has had a profound influence on our language. No Tyndale, no Shakespeare.”
Tyndale’s translation of the Bible into English fed the desire of ordinary people to improve their lives through reading and self-education. It is also argued that it fed the pressure for democracy and public discourse.
Tyndale was executed by strangulation and then burnt at the stake in 1536.
‘Death in Flanders’ will be broadcast at 6pm. If you miss the broadcast it will be available on Corinium Radio’s ‘Listen Again’ feature and in the ‘Broadcasts’ section of this website.
