If you are in London on Friday October 4th, then it would be lovely to see you at the launch of the Camden Poetry Series anthology A Scream of Many Colours when Somewhere Else member Iris Anne Lewis will be one of the contributors reading their work.

Song for the Yazidi Women was originally published on the I am not a Silent Poet website and can be read here. Iris submitted the poem for the anthology back in December 2017. A few months later she heard the poem was accepted and the anthology was finally published this year.

The Camden Poetry Series is part of Camden and Lumen Poetry, a London poetry project in support of cold weather shelters. In A Scream of Many Colours poets were asked to respond to some of the violence and disasters that confront us when we switch on the radio or television. Published by Poetry Space, the Camden launch of the anthology will feature readings from several contributors. 

Proceeds from the evening goes towards cold weather shelters for the homeless and profits from the sale of the anthology will be donated to Médecins san Frontières.

The event includes an Open Mic and will take place at Trinity United Reform Church, 1 Buck St, Camden Town (1-2 mins. Camden Town tube.) 7.00 p.m. (doors open 6.30 p.m.) Entrance £5/£4 concession.

‘Betrayal’ is the theme of this year’s open competition organised by The National Association of Writers’ Groups. They are offering a first prize of £200 to the winning short story and poem chosen by prose judge Tim Wilson and poetry judge Alison Chisholm.

The competition is £5 to enter, or three poems for £10 and the closing date is 30 November. For more details visit their website.

The latest edition of the literary magazine Graffiti is out and it features winning stories from Graham Bruce Fletcher and Clare Finnimore. The theme for this edition is ‘Travelling in Heaven and Hell’.

Graham’s story ‘Begging for it’ is about a boy travelling across fenland in the 1970s and was highly commended by the judge Jan Turk Petrie. Clare’s story ‘Strawberry Road,’ based on travels in Australia and New Zealand, was named one of six runners up.

The magazine is available by subscription. For further details email editor Rona Laycock on rona_laycock@yahoo.co.uk. ​

Do check out our story of the month for August. It’s a gentle, nostalgic piece by Jim Moeller.

More success for Iris Anne Lewis, whose poem, ‘I shall have to be punished for writing this’ has been published in the weekly online journal Fresh Air Poetry.

The journal, which is inspired by the Kenneth Koch poem ‘Fresh Air,’ aims to publish astonishing, surprising and provocative poetry. It is edited by Stephen Daniels – a poet from Swindon. Stephen previously edited Amaryllis Poetry and has two published poetry pamphlets (‘Tell Mistakes I Love Them’, V.Press, 2017 & ‘£5 for this love’, Paper Swans Press, 2018). His third pamphlet ‘Birth, Love, Work, Love, Death & Other B-sides’ is due to be published later this year by Picaroon Poetry. 

Iris’s poem can be read here.

Three poems by Frank McMahon are published this month. “Flint’ and ‘Passajes’ appear in the June edition of ‘The Cannon’s Mouth’, the quarterly journal of the Birmingham-based Cannon Poets.

The third poem ‘It is the Sound’ has been published by ‘I am not a silent poet’, the
online magazine for poetry and artwork protesting against abuse in any of its forms. It begins:

IT IS THE SOUND
of a child abandoned on a hillside
of a man’s tears falling across a rock
of a seabird caught in a trough of oil
of a whale lost amongst the throb of engines
of a mother pleading for the life of her child.

Frank said: “Sometimes the news about the suffering and injustice in the world
becomes overwhelming and the voices of pain and despair break through,
compelling me to respond with poetry.”
The full poem can be read here:

Stephen Connolly’s short play ‘Paper Human’ has been longlisted for the British Theatre Challenge 2019. There were over 200 entries for this year’s competition (which has been running since 2011) from 14 countries, 25% of which were selected for the longlist.  Up to 30 plays will be shortlisted by the 14th July and 5 winners are due to be announced by the end of July.

Paper Human is based on real events from WWII, when Dutch civil servant Jacob Lentz and his French counterpart René Carmille were charged by the invading Germans with identifying the Jews of their respective countries according to the Nuremberg Race Laws, using the technology of IBM.