May has been an eventful month for Somewhere Else writer Iris Anne Lewis with two pieces published in online magazines. ‘The Greenwood’, her retelling of the traditional Child ballad ‘The Cruel Mother was published in Issue 15 of Three Drops from a Cauldron

​Her poem ‘Song for the Yazidi Women’ was posted on 13th May on the poetry blog I am not a Silent Poet.

Stephen Connolly read his short story ‘Gustav Carlson’s Autumn Leaves’ at Burdall’s Yard, Bath on Friday 2nd June. The event More Banksy than Bonnets was organised by Stokes Croft Writers as part of the Bath Fringe.

Stephen Connolly was one of three lead writers on Gloucester Scriptorium’s latest project ‘Tapestry’, a play loosely inspired by the W.E. Henley poem ‘Invictus’, directed by Jarek Adams.
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The play was performed in the choir of Gloucester Cathedral on Thursday 11th May, at 19:00 and again at 20:30. Tickets £12 from Cathedral shop, Box Office 01452 768928 or on their website

Cirencester’s Abbey 900 Festival was the inspiration for Iris Anne Lewis’s poem ‘The Imagined Abbey’. It was published on 19th March in Ground, an online poetry magazine for people of any religion or none who respect each other.

Another publication success for Iris is with the very different online poetry magazine Strange Poetry which has as its strapline ‘There is no exquisite beauty… without some strangeness in the proportion’. Check out the site on 19th June when her poem ‘Peace is a peaceful lampshade’ will be posted for all to read.

Is the world’s longest running soap opera due to experience its first serious competition since it began in 1951?

Somewhere Else Writers are proud to present the first of three episodes of  ‘The Inn on the Green,’ a Cotswold-based, serialised drama which began broadcasting on Sunday 26th March 4.30 – 5pm on Corinium Radio.

Read about the unusual way the drama was written  – and what the process has taught us on our blog page.

Yes, we were probably mad to decide to do our own radio soap opera, given our combined radio script writing experience amounted to zero but Somewhere Else Writers are nothing if not brave, and the process of writing The Inn on the Green has made us laugh – and learn a lot.  The idea was to invent a collection of characters who congregate each episode at a mythical Cotswold pub, and then to each write dialogue for a single character, who we would also play.

The fact that only two members had done any acting did not deter us – nor the fact that none of us had written a radio play before. Selwyn Morgan, whose brainchild it was, came up with a rough outline for episode one and off we went. If you tune in to Corinium Radio on Sundays 4.30 to 5pm  or catch-up on this website you will meet landlords Jonathan and Alicia,  kitchen staff Lydia and Rosemary, countryman Joe, academic Gerry and the village bigwigs Bernard and Barbara plus many other characters yet to be invented. There’s intrigue and scandal – and some unintentionally weird radio moments.

It’s been enormous fun working together to create the world of Crompton Boswick and though we have made mistakes ( we’re not expecting the BBC to knock on our door any day soon) we are learning the complexities of writing radio scripts in the best way possible – by doing it. So do join us on our learning curve and discover what passions lie beneath the surface of country life.

Episode Two of The Inn on the Green will be broadcast on Sunday April 23rd and Episode Three on Sunday 28th May 4.30pm to 5pm.

We enjoyed it so much – we went back.

Sophie and Jim returned to Smokey Joe’s Cafe in Cheltenham in February to read at the second ever Flashers’ Club Night.

Jim read ‘A Little History of Mr Duncan’  and Sophie read ‘Breathing Out.’ They just hope the audience enjoyed it as much as they did – thank you organiser Alex Clark. Pictures of the evening can be found here.