writing
Fiction & Food
4 months ago
by Birmingham Book Festival
in birmingham, book, books, festival, fiction, literature events, News, novel, october, writing
In anticipation of the forthcoming Birmingham Food Fest, which overlaps with us by a few days, Radar Magazine asked Festival Director Sara Beadle to get thinking about the relationship between food and fiction.
Here, Sara shares with Radar’s readers six of her favourite Foodie fiction moments. Yummy.
All Night at The Museum
4 months ago
A huge well done to all those who braved, and survived, Saturday’s all night writing workshop.
The fourth of these we have run, it is so pleasing to see that people still have the desire and courage to experiment with their creativity in this way.
From 11pm to 5am we wrote, drank coffee, snacked on unhealthy sugary things and wandered inquisitively around the warren of warehouses and stores that make up the Museum Collections Centre in Birmingham.
It was a long night, but a staggering experience to be surrounded by artefac
ts as eclectically arranged as these, many of which originate from the West Midlands.
Over on our October Festival Blog, our student journalists are beginning the long process of writing this up, with more detailed interviews, images and examples of creative writing to follow.
Here, on our Facebook Page, you can view a gallery of images of the night’s activities. You can also look back over our twitter feed for snippets of information and pictures posted as we went along.
You can also catch a piece about the workshop on BBC Midlands Today on Monday 3 October 2011 at 1.30pm and 6.30pm.
On The Blog: Interview with Festival Book Author Jenn Ashworth & All Night Writing
4 months ago
Our fantastic team of student journalists have posted this interview with festival author Jenn Ashworth, whose book Cold Light is this year’s featured book. See Jenn on Sunday 16th October 2011.
The blog will be gaining momentum as we hurtle towards the festival – less than a week to go!
Make sure you bookmark it, or follow us on twitter (@bhambookfest) to see new content as soon as it arrives. News, reviews, previews and more.
The blogging team are also bravely joining us for tomorrow night’s All Night At The Museum, an exercise in writing and sleep deprivation, with writer Judith Allnatt at the helm. We’ll be uploading pictures and updates throughout the night. We will also be tweeting. If you prefer your warm bed on a Saturday night, you can catch up with the all nighters on BBC Midlands Today on Monday afternoon and evening (and later online).
This workshop is now sold out, but there are four more chances to develop your own writing before the festival is over. Radio Writing, Journalism, Ideas and Fiction are all covered. See the diary for more details.
Celebrate Wha? An anthology of West Midlands poets
5 months ago
Here’s an event you might like, featuring the current Birmingham Poet Laureate, Roy McFarlane, and others from the West Midlands..
The Drum presents Celebrate Wha?
Hosted by Dr Robert Beckford, a night of poetry, conversations and music…
- Thu 22 Sep, 7.30pm
- £5 (£3)
- Studio
Ten Black British Poets from the West Midlands
Edited by Eric Doumerc and Roy McFarlane (Birmingham Poet Laureate 2011)
Celebrate Wha? is an anthology of poems about identity and race, curried goat ‘n’ rice. Ten poets – Dreadlock Alien, Sue Brown, Marcia Calame, Evoke, Martin Glynn, Michelle Hubbard, Kokumo, Roy McFarlane, Chester Morrison and Moqapi Selassie – explore what it means to be black and British and from the West Midlands. This is the English language in a Caribbean coat, Auden in a Creole accent. Celebrate Wha? celebrates writing with a reggae rhythm, born out of a heady mixture of dub, grime and performance poetry, politics and music, anger and laughter. Join us for the official launch of an anthology dedicated to Birmingham’s Black poets – long overdue.
http://www.the-drum.org.uk/event/celebrate-wha
The Birmingham Book Festival 2011 Programme Coming Very Soon
6 months ago
THE TIME IS ALMOST UPON US…
The Festival programme is complete and will soon be winging its way to you (if you are on our mailing list) and will be available as a pdf here from Wednesday 10 August 2011. You will also be able to peruse the events diary and click through to our box office here, or go to our box office directly once events are on sale. We are using MAC’s ticketing services – and we are confident that this will make your booking experience smooth and cost effective – there are no booking fees!
Once the programme is released look out for special offers, giveaways and more – follow us on twitter (@bhambookfest) and like our Facebook page to get the latest.
WIN TICKETS TO SEE OUR FESTIVAL BOOK AUTHOR, JENN ASHWORTH.
We are delighted to be featuring Jenn Ashworth’s second novel, Cold Light as our Festival Book. This means we will be featuring Jenn in the festival and talking about the book here. We’d love to know what you think of Cold Light.
We are offering you the chance to win tickets to meet Jenn and hear her talk about the book on 16th October 2011. To win, send us your review of Cold Light, (no more than 300 words, please) via joanne@birminghambookfestival.org. The best two reviews will win a pair of tickets to meet Jenn at the event, get your books signed and ask her any burning questions you have about Cold Light! You have until 1 October 2011 to submit your review.
If you don’t have a copy of Cold Light, you can buy one here.
Good Luck!
The results of the Poetry Relay are in!
6 months ago
- The final team, finished at last
- Deborah Alma brings her props
Saturday’s relay was a great success. We careened around the West Midlands in a minibus, racing through high streets and across parks to perform our poems in relay. All of our poets made it to their alloted destinations, all of them wrote their 20 lines, and we released ten pigeons from the brilliant Project Pigeon who raced back to Birmingham and determined the final order of the poem.
- Philip Monks takes the baton at Burton
- Emma Purshouse gets things going at Stoke on Trent
As the day wore on we lost time, gained it 
back, grabbed cups of tea where we could, infiltrated cinema queues and park festivals, performed live on Touch FM, entertained a pub garden full of walkers on the Malvern hills, and delighted the security guards and station managers at Stoke station. Kids on bikes helped us release our pigeons, elderly wanderers took a quick rest to listen to us in Bromyard, and dog show enthusiasts got more than they bargained for in Polesworth.
It was a fantastic day of surprises, laughs, rushing around and excellent poetry. All of our poets responded to their task in different and interesting ways, and the words we got to know well by the end of the day seemed ever more relevant as the band of merry poets grew.
Live on Touch FM at Polesworth
- Unsuspecting walkers at Malvern
However, a relay is still a race, and we must tell you the results!
Our ten pigeons arrived safely back on saturday evening, and once they had a quick rest they revealed the order in which our poems returned. The full poem will be written up for you soon, but here is the final order as they flew in…
- Hatton Country World’s poem by Helen Yendall came in first.
- Second was Bromyard’s ode, by sack-racing Deborah Alma.
- Next in was Burton-On-Trent’s ode to beer, by Philip Monks.
- Fourth was Telford Odeon’s poem about the art of queuing by aptly dressed Dave Reeves.
- Fifth was Adrian Johnson’s poem for the Malvern Hills about cycling.
- Sixth was Polesworth, with Malcolm Dewhirst’s poem for the park.
- Seventh was the place it all began, Stoke on Trent, with Emma Purshouse’s imagining of Platform Diving.
- Eighth was our final venue, Stafford, with Roz Goddard’s offering on pies and snorkelling.
- Ninth was Worcester’s stain glass making ode, by Rohit Ballal.
- Tenth was Kurly McGeachie’s poem for Highley, hot coal shovelling!
The pigeons take flight
A bus full of poets!Here are a couple of pictures of the day, but watch this space as the team from Monty Funk , who followed us around for the entire 12 hours recording, will be producing some audio/interactive content for us – to mark the day and build a lasting legacy as we head towards London 2012.
Gracious thanks to all of our venues, poets (special mention to Emma P, who was first on the bus and performed her poem no less than TEN times) and team – we all had a wonderful day, and the weather held.
Particular thanks to London 2012 and Arts Council England for inspiring and supporting the venture.
Relay Time!
6 months ago
Tomorrow we embark upon the maddest event we’ve ever attempted (and we are known for having odd ideas).
The Great West Midlands Poetry Relay is a big ask, but we are so excited to be doing it. We want to thank, and wish luck to, everyone who has agreed to be involved.
Our poets, Emma Purshouse, Philip Monks, Malcolm Dewhirst, Helen Yendall, Rohit Ballal, Adrian Johnson, Deborah Alma, Kurly McGeachie, Dave Reeves and Roz Goddard – we can’t wait to hear your poems and hope you’ve packed your sandwiches and got your comfortable travelling clothes on ready to step onto the poetry bus. The bus will be packed with snacks, pens, paper and other things required to keep ten poets alive for twelve hours.
We’re also delighted to be working with the guys over at Monty Funk who are coming with us and recording audio all day that they will then edit into a series of podcasts about the Relay – you’ll be able to experience the poems long after the day’s events are over. They will be available online and even mapped so you can download them in the places they were created.
Thanks are also due to our friends at Project Pigeon
We also want to thank our venues, all ten of them, without whom this wouldn’t be happening. We can’t wait to see how the shoppers at Hatton Country World or the cinema goers at Telford Odeon react to our bus rolling up and the inevitable outpouring of poets.
Lastly, thanks are due to Arts Council England and the Cultural Olympiad Open Weekend team for supporting the event.
We will be LIVE BLOGGING tomorrow on this site – as often as we get signal, we will be updating to let you know where we are along the route, how big and unruly the poem is becoming and who has been travel sick.
Lastly, we’ll be on BBC Radio WM tonight after 9pm, on the Loyd Williams show, and on BBC Radio Stoke tomorrow at 7.15am talking about the Relay, so listen out for us.
That’s it for now – we’re off to polish the megaphone and pack the bus!
Are you Birmingham’s next Poet Laureate?
6 months ago
Birmingham Poet Laureate Roy McFarlane performs with Amsterdam City Poet Frank Starik
It’s that time of the year again. Birmingham Libraries are currently seeking the next Birmingham Poet Laureate.
The new laureate will compete for the title against other hopefuls, performing around the city on National Poetry Day (6 October) and ending up at our Festival Launch for a special live announcement that evening.
Full Details about the scheme and how to apply can be found here. The deadline is 12th August 2011.
This is a unique opportunity to get involved with the writing community in Birmingham and promote poetry in the city. Good luck!
The Great West Midlands Poetry Relay – Sat 23 July 2011
6 months ago
To celebrate the Cultural Olympiad Open Weekend on Saturday 23rd July 2011, ten poets will complete a poetry relay across ten locations in the West Midlands.. This will take the form of public events in different venues, including stations, libraries, Polesworth Park, Hatton Country World, a motorway service station and the Pie and Ale Pub in Stafford.
At the first location, poet A will write and perform to an audience the first segment of a collective poem. They will then join a team minibus and be taken to location two. There poet B will read the first segment and continue in that vein, writing their own segment. Then poets A and B will each perform to an audience. They will then be taken to the third location, where they will be joined by Poet C. The team of poets and segments of the poem will grow until ten segments and ten events are completed. All the finished pieces will then be attached to ten racing pigeons from Project Pigeon who will be released to carry the ten segments of the poem back to their Birmingham loft. The order in which they arrive back will determine the final manifestation of the poem.
| 8am | Stoke On Trent, Railway Station, Booking Hall, ST4 2AA | http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/stations/sot/details.html |
| 9.15am | Burton On Trent, Library | http://www.istaffordshire.co.uk/profile/282991/Burton-on-Trent/Burton-Library/ |
| 10.15am | Polesworth Abbey Green Park – as part of Love Abbey Green event with Touch FM, B78 1DU | http://www.loveparksweek.org.uk/Whats-on-detail.aspx?EventID=85eb71fa-46e0-40cb-a6db-1c9abc2266e8&County=Warwickshire |
| 11.40am | Hatton Country World, Toffee Shop, CV35 8XA | http://www.hattonworld.com/shoppingvillage/ |
| 13.10pm | Worcester Arts Workshop – Cafe Bliss, WR1 1RU | http://www.worcesterartsworkshop.org.uk/aboutus.asp?menuID=Cafe%20Bliss |
| 14.30pm | Malvern Hills – British Camp (Herefordshire Beacon) car park | http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=wr136dw&hl=en&ll=52.063573,-2.345753&spn=0.018864,0.038581&sll=53.800651,-4.064941&sspn=18.61907,39.506836&z=15 |
| 16.05pm | Bromyard Town Green – behind the Public Hall near St Peter’s Churchyard HR7 4DU |
www.herefordshire.gov.uk/communityhalls/chd_bromyardpublichall.aspx |
| 17.15pm | Highley – Severn Centre forecourt, WV16 6JG | http://www.severncentre.co.uk/index.htm |
| 18:20pm | Telford Odeon, Forgegate, TF3 4NE | http://www.nationalvenues.co.uk/shropshire/telford/telfordodeon.htm |
| 19:35pm | The Pie and Ale House, Crabbery Street, Stafford, ST16 2BA | http://www.pieandale.com/ |
Here’s a google map of the day!
Come along to celebrate the Cultural Olympiad and get involved in the creation of the relay poem which will be inspired by each place the poets visit and the concept of a relay race!
Follow the relay on twitter (@gwmpr) and see where we are along our route!
The Spring Thing Out and About
10 months ago
We have been out and about in the city today asking people this: What Does Birmingham Mean To You? We’ve had all sorts of answers already, and we’ll be inviting you to give yours tomorrow. These answers will be displayed on luggage tags outside of the Talking Cities event. The writers therein will be talking about cities – this one and others – that mean something to them. Amongst them are Amsterdam and Detroit, to name a 
few.
Here are a few pictures of our activities on this gorgeous April day – Spring really is upon us.
With thanks to Birmingham Cathedral and Birmingham Central Library for their hospitality.
