FREE AND ALL WELCOME TO ATTEND!
Here is a list of the guest lectures, talks, readings and masterclasses hosted by Creative Writing at the University of Leicester this term. For further information about any of these events, please email Jonathan Taylor.
Wednesday 29 January 2020, 2-4pm in Bennett Lecture Theatre 4
Michael Caines, Author and Editor at the Times Literary Supplement, ‘Nightmare on Grub Street: Where Journalism and Creative Writing Meet.’
(Part of the MA in Creative Writing – but all welcome).
Tuesday 4 February 2020, 10am-11 in Attenborough 109
Paul Taylor-McCartney, ‘Writing Dystopian Fiction.’
(Part of the second-year module, ‘Advanced Creative Writing Skills’ – but all welcome).
Tuesday 11 February 2020, 12-1pm in Ken Edwards 527
Dan Powell, ‘Short Stories and Endings.’
(Part of the first-year module, ‘Introduction to Writing Creatively 2’ – but all welcome).
Monday 16 March 2020, 3.30-5pm in Physics Lecture Theatre B
Jonathan Ruppin, Literary Agent
(Part of the MA in Creative Writing – but all welcome).
Wednesday 18 March 2020, 2-4pm in Attenborough Film Theatre
Melanie Abrahams, ‘The Literature Ecology: Curating and Producing Work and Life.’
(Part of the MA in Creative Writing and the second-year module, ‘Diversifying the Publishing Industry’ – but all welcome).
Monday 23 March 2020, 10am-12 in Ken Edwards 527
Louis de Bernières, Masterclass
(Part of the MA in Creative Writing – but all welcome. Just email jt265@le.ac.uk in advance if you want to come along, because places are limited for this masterclass).
By Jessica Bacon
Life Update: I'm a Master's Graduate!
That’s right I've graduated ... again. It was my gradu-bacon (if you will) last week, where I received my Master's in Creative Writing from the University of Leicester!
Not quite sure where those twelve months went, but I certainly have learnt and written more in a year than I have in a long time. I really enjoyed the course and loved going back to graduate with a handful of my course mates in De Montfort Hall. It was an early start, but we avoided the rain and the ceremony included some very inspiring speakers and an excellent band.
Like most ceremonies, it went on for a long while. Who knew there were so many courses on offer? There were seven full pages of graduates to get through in the ceremony and that was the first of two ceremonies that day!
Even though they were extremely hungry during graduation and thought about leaving to go to the box office to buy snacks (rude), it was great to have my Mum and my boyfriend Dan by my side to share my achievement with.
Now it's all done I feel a huge sense of relief (for not falling over) and achievement (for finishing an MA). It feels very rewarding to start and complete a course in a year. There isn't the long impending slog of a degree of three or more years. It's very snappy, bursting at the seams with learning and it's a really challenging workload and change of pace from an undergraduate degree.
I am extremely grateful to my course mates and my tutors who provided constant support, advice and feedback on my work throughout the class work and my essays. I felt well supported as a student at Leicester and I think that's quite a rare thing to find at University.
What next?
Well, I wrote 12,000 words of a novel for my MA dissertation that I aim to finish this year. I'd love to send it out to publishers, just to get it out in the open and get some feedback.
I also want to write regularly. The amount I wrote over the twelve month course (35,000 words) has shown me how much I can do alongside working and that if I put my mind to it, I should be able to produce a hefty body of creative work before the year is out.
My Master's and my Graduations always remind me how much I appreciate education. Higher education courses offer the opportunity to learn a great deal about yourself, your work ethic and your determination as well as all the academic knowledge and qualifications that you gain.
I have applied to a PhD and I intend to apply to a few others as well (must act fast, though!). I want to finish my education with a Doctorate, as I feel prepared for a large research project that could benefit both my creative writing and my understanding of literature as a whole. I also want to continue with and grow my side hustles; writing features for magazines, reviewing books and health and beauty products for my blog, as well as collaborations and charity work. I really enjoy being busy and having a varied workload as I have a very wide range of interests all of which I want to pursue - it's just not always possible at the same time.
On another exciting note, I begin a new job in less than two weeks in marketing at a publishers in Cambridge. I'm excited for the new change of pace and to work in a completely different sector of publishing.
About the author
Jessica Bacon has just graduated from her Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Leicester. While undertaking her MA, Jess was the Editor of Architecture Magazine as well as writing articles for Be Kind Magazine, writing material for Sue Ryder's fundraising campaigns and reviewing books for independent publishers on her blog. Jess works as a Library Marketing Executive at the Cambridge University Press. She hopes to finish her novel this year, continue writing for magazines and curating her creative flare on her personal blog, Unexpected Adventures. See: www.jessicakatie.com.
Jessica Mayhew’s first pamphlet, Someone Else’s Photograph, was published by Crystal Clear Creators in 2012. After graduating from UCL with a Masters in English Literature, she spent a year working in south-east Asia, and during this time, wrote a pamphlet titled Amok, which was published by Eyewear in 2015. Her poetry, fiction and essays have been published in magazines and journals including Ambit, Stand, Staple, Brittle Star, Magma, and The Interdisciplinary Studies Journal. Jessica currently lives in Northampton with her partner, and her former street dog, Bracken. Instagram: @jesslmayhew
Below, Jessica talks about her new book, Longship, which has just been published by Eyewear. See: https://store.eyewearpublishing.com/products/longship
By Jessica Mayhew
When I was little, my Gran used to tell us grandchildren to remember that we, like her, were Vikings. She came from the Shetland Isles, and told us stories about islands of rock with no trees, the North Sea which drowned the sailors in our family, the old Gods. When she died, my uncle commended her to Valhalla, and her gravestone was carved with a longship.
These stories have always enthralled me. In fact, my tattoos are all inspired by stories from the Eddas. In my poetry, I wanted to capture moments in Norse mythology that would speak to our own experiences of life. Njord and Skadhi's ill-fated marriage, how Freyja got her necklace, what Odin whispers to the body of his son - these are all stories of imperfect, very human beings who still fascinate me.
Longship breaks the boundaries between Norse mythology and the modern world. It assumes the voices of the gods and goddesses, and weaves them through stories of love, death and nature today. Poems act as a communication between our modern selves and deeper, older impulses and ways of living in nature, ‘feeling the night / come on like a bruise, a gentle harm.’ I was thrilled when Longship was selected as the winner of the 2018 Melita Hume Poetry Prize.
Colette Sensier, the judge of the 2018 Melita Hume Prize says, 'Longship blurs myth and modern life, moving between ventriloquism of the gods of the Norse myths, and the griefs of present day bereavement, love and – portrayed in fabulous language on the brink between surrealist metaphor and natural wonder – climate apocalypse.'
Here is a poem from the book.
Baldr
Dusty quartz and ore
bolted through with gold,
raw wood, oak and apple, sap-wet,
speared, all swore me no mar.
I’d kiss flames from flint,
Dredge water for dousing
from the hooves of the waves
and the ships that saddled them.
I let the bear nuzzle my neck,
mouth foaming and fanged –
bolder, I leapt from cliffs, woundless.
I winged up the high pines,
swung from rookeries.
From there, I could watch in secret
my blind brother, face turned
to the sunset, feeling the night
come on like a bruise, a gentle harm.
Notes on the myth:
After Baldr’s nightmares about his coming death, his mother Frigg makes everything in all the worlds swear an oath not to harm him. She only leaves out the mistletoe, believing it too small to cause any hurt. Loki learns this, and tricks Baldr’s blind brother Hod into killing Baldr with a shaft of mistletoe.
Everybody's Reviewing, the review blog run by the Centre for New Writing at the University of Leicester, has just passed 100,000 views! Its huge readership includes people from the East Midlands region, the UK and internationally.
The site was set up in 2014, in conjunction with Everybody's Reading Festival in Leicester, aiming to provide a space for readers to share their enthusiasms. It's a democratic review website, where readers of all ages and experience can share positive reviews of books or events they have enjoyed.
Since 2014, it has gone from strength to strength. It has published 100s of reviews. It has provided a forum for 100s of new and experienced reviewers to publish their reviews. It has helped showcase commercially-published, independently-published and self-published books, as well as exhibitions and performances, by new, up-and-coming and established writers. There have been numerous guest editors, gaining work experience in editing and website curation.
If you'd like to get involved with Everybody's Reviewing, you can read more about it, and find contact details here.
Congratulations to all - readers, reviewers, authors, editors alike - on reaching this major landmark!
Free and All Welcome!
Please join us 6.00-7.30pm on Friday 29 November in the Courtyard Room of the Leicester Creative Business Depot, 31 Rutland St, Leicester LE1 1RE, for the launch of two provocative new collections of poetry from New Walk Editions.
Steve Ely will be reading from I Beheld Satan as Lightning Fall from Heaven, a sequence about love and betrayal; and John Greening from Europa’s Flight, a crown of sonnets about Cretan myth, borders, the refugee crisis and yes, Brexit …
And congratulations are due to New Walk Editions, which has recently been shortlisted for the Michael Marks Publisher's Award 2019. One of the pamphlets published by New Walk Editions, Declan Ryan's Fighters, Losers, has also been shortlisted for an award. You can see further details here.
Hope to see you at the launch event. Admission is free, and there is street food and a bar!
Lydia Towsey is a poet, performer, cat keeper, mother and ukulele strummer – with an MA in Creative Writing and a primary school certificate in "tap dancing." Previously shortlisted for the Bridport Poetry Prize, she’s spoken and performed everywhere from London’s 100 Club, Roundhouse and the House of Lords, to "On the Buses," with Literary Leicester and Arriva (bus company).
Commissioned by the Guardian, Royal Albert Hall, Kew Gardens, Apples and Snakes, Poet in the City and more, Lydia has UK toured three shows, funded by Arts Council England. In 2018 she was one of the artists listed for the Outspoken London Prize for Poetry in Film and in the UK Saboteur Awards for Best Show (The Venus Papers) and for Best Spoken Word Performer.
In addition to her practice as a writer and performer, Lydia works for Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust and is the Artistic Director of WORD! – a poetry organisation delivering one of the longest running poetry nights in the UK.
Widely published in journals and anthologies (with Bloodaxe Books, Candlestick Press, Five Leaves and others) her debut collection, The Venus Papers, was published by Burning Eye Books in 2015. The English Disease is her second collection.
The English Disease (Burning Eye, 2019)
"The English Disease" has been coined as a term to describe everything from missed penalties and vitamin D deficiency, to no sex please, tea and rickets. Exploring contemporary world events, including the international migration crisis and the British EU Referendum, alongside the lived experience of becoming a mother in a year of celebrity death and continental fracture, this collection examines the condition afresh.
With zombies, cats, Bowie, break-ups and the weather; eating disorders, buses, Beatrix Potter, queueing, nature, war and nursery rhymes, The English Disease draws upon class, colonialism and other undead matters to explore identity at a time of now … apocalypse?
“This book is a new national anthem. Visual, vivid, curious and kind” (Joelle Taylor).
You can see a trailer about the book here.
And below is a poem from the collection:
Love Poem to a Zombie Government
You – are my sugar lump,
my spark in the dark, prairie flower,
swamp duck, blue cheese,
break-in-the-clouds, apocalypse breeze.
You’re my Sunday, Monday, Tuesday week
at the knees and in the feet.
Last night I dreamt you tried to kill me.
You’re my chickadee,
sweet pea, sweetheart, honey,
baby, darling, kick
the bucket.
My sun, my moon, my stars, my rain,
baby; last night I dreamt you tried to kill me, again.
Martin Stannard is a poet and critic, and lives in Nottingham. He was the founding editor of joe soap’s canoe (1978-1993), a poetry magazine some people regard as legendary. It can be found archived here. He was also poetry editor of the online art and poetry magazine Decals of Desire. His most recent full-length collection is Poems for the Young at Heart (Leafe Press, 2016). A chapbook, Items, was published by The Red Ceilings Press in 2018. Forthcoming in 2020 are a pamphlet, The Review, from Knives Forks and Spoons, and a full-length collection from Leafe Press that currently has a working title of Reading Moby-Dick and Various Other Matters.
In 2007-8 he was the Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow at Nottingham Trent University but, that year aside, he taught English, Literature and Culture at a university in China from 2005 until 2018. In spite of having failed to learn to speak Chinese apart from some very basic everyday stuff, such as talking about the weather with cab drivers, translating classic poetry from the Tang dynasty period has occupied him alongside his own poetry for the last five or six years. Shoestring Press have just published The Moon is About 238,855 Miles Away, a collection of these translations / versions. You can see more details about it on the publisher's website here.
The following is the book’s introductory note that explains the versions / translations:
From The Moon is About 238,855 Miles Away, by Martin Stannard
The originals of the poems here are from the Tang dynasty (618-907), a time generally regarded as the great period of classical Chinese poetry. The versions here are just that: versions, and not direct translations, hence the “after….” at the beginning of their attributions.
My process has been to create a direct translation, and then rework the poem to some degree, a degree that varies depending upon the individual poem. In some cases I have removed names and/or places, or Chinese idioms or cultural references that either do not usefully translate or that would be meaningless to a reader without the necessary knowledge of Chinese culture. In some cases I have moved things around quite a lot, and in most cases I have also slipped in a phrase or line of my own. Sometimes titles have been changed. In every case I have attempted to create a poem that is able to stand alone, rendered in the English I use in my everyday life and in my own poetry, but which stays as faithful as I know how to the meaning, tone and mood of the original. I am no Sinologist, and purists may object, but so it goes.
It is worth noting too, I think, that from living and working in China for twelve years I came to learn that many (if not most) of today’s Chinese readers do not fully understand all the subtle references and allusions in China’s classical poems, a fact that has given me the confidence to leave some things out. My ultimate aim has been to make poems that give pleasure and food for thought. One can only try.
Reading at Sunrise
after 辰诣超师院读禅经 by Liǔ Zōngyuán
At sunrise the pines are bathed in fog and drip with dew
Bamboo in the courtyard has taken on the colour of moss
I draw water from the well
Clean my teeth and dust myself down
I read from scripture as I walk
I’ve been too long in darkness and want to rewrite what I think I am
But it’s all I can do to read quietly to myself
Looking at the Moon
after月夜 by Dù Fǔ
I imagine you shivering alone in your room
Looking out the window at the moon
You are far away in the capital
But distance does not separate us
I imagine the fragrance of your hair
And remember the jade bracelet upon your arm
You know I will look at the same moon
Until I come to clear your tears away with my kisses
