Monthly Archives: July 2009

by Violet Rook

The drawer opened and I found a notebook, green and dusty. A relic of 1917.  Clear honest handwriting, expressing love, hope and a view of the future. Small sketches of friends with signatures of good luck. Tears were being repulsed, hard swallowing occurred to prevent a sudden rush of emotion.

The words brought such forceful but sad feelings. The little book could have been written a few weeks before, the words were so fresh with impressions and poems.  Words often connect to the time and place of events with a collective image. The view was of water, sand, sea, surf and sky with the colours changing every second from reds to darkest blue.

Monet painted this scene giving a new word to the world of artists.The chalk cliffs of this Normandy coastline standing to attention across from the White Cliffs at Dover. This was the idyllic vision of one part of France scared by other events in the 20th century ,a scene painted by the TV programme ‘Coast’ just after the news of the death of last soldier of the First World War. He looked so frail; did those feet really run across muddy fields to the sound of thunderous guns facing those dark scenes of blood, guts and death where now in the holiday season tourists might be heading.

Harfluer was headlined with its similar views six hundred years before, a famous play and films telling the tale. Its scenes with many sequels, the actors change but not the story.  What will be the prologue in 111 years time? An old man perhaps shouting his tale to the wind and rain, full of sound and fury. Can feelings be transmitted in time via words. The notebook was an insight into a world which should have been desolate, yet the words and the handwriting were of hope.

The John Betjeman Young People’s Poetry Prize is now in its third year. The competition was inaugurated in 2006 to celebrate the centenary of one of the nation’s best-loved poets. The competition is open to 11-14 year olds living anywhere in the British Isles and the Republic of Ireland. Entrants are limited to one poem each about their local surroundings or any aspect thereof, whether it be a house, a street, a garden, a park, a city or a wider landscape. The spirit behind the competition is to encourage young people to understand and appreciate the importance of place.

The inaugural prize was presented by the Poet Laureate Andrew Motion to 12-year-old Jamal Msebele in front of a packed congregation at the church of St Mary Redcliffe, Bristol. Since then Jamal Msebele has been a guest on Radio 4 and has become quite a star.

Following its success, John Murray (Publishers) have offered an annual prize of £1000 (£500 to the winner and £500 to the English department of their school).

The winning poems for the 2007 competition were announced at a special poetry event at the Cheltenham Festival of Literature, where a sell-out crowd heard the poems read by leading actors including Edward Fox, Phyllida Law and Daniel Stephens.

If you would like to enter this year’s competition, please visit www.johnbetjeman.com/comp. For all enquiries, please contact the prize’s administrator Justin Gowers (email: justinagowers@yahoo.co.uk)

By Millie Pavitt

The BBC’s Poetry Season invites you to vote for the Nation’s Favourite Poet! http://www.bbc.co.uk/poetryseason/

Watch and listen to poetry on BBC iPlayer and read some wonderful poetry by well known poets including Arvon tutors Simon Armitage, Carol Ann Duffy and Patrick Neate.

Famous people make their own celebrity choices and cast their vote for the Nation’s Favourite Poet. Hear English actress Sunetra Sarker discuss our new Poet Laureate and how she has “always been affected by the female solidarity on show in Carol Ann Duffy’s poems”. Carol Ann Duffy is currently tutoring Arvon course Poetry for Children: Princesses, Bangers and Mash this week at Moniack Mhor, Inverness-shire.

You can also read Patrick Neate on Duffy’s splendid anger and poetry slams in his Spoken Word column Anger Management. Patrick will be tutoring Fiction: So How’s it done? The Hurst, The John Osborne Arvon Centre in October. http://www.bbc.co.uk/poetryseason/spoken_word.shtml

The International Literary Quarterly was  founded in November 2007 as an eclectic review dedicated to publishing the best in contemporary fiction and poetry, as well as literary criticism and works in translation.

InterLitQ’s editors are all writers themselves, Arvon tutors Mimi Khalvati and Jill Dawson are among them!

Read Issue 7 now!

www.interlitq.org/

I was up at Moniack Mhor last week in glorious sunshine. While I was there Centre Director Hamish MacDonald unveiled Moniack’s new picnic table, surely staking its claim for the most stunning seminar spot at an Arvon centre. Amid the soaring chant of skylarks and the scent of the heather, Hamish sits at the table and contemplates his holidays in South Uist.

Ruth Borthwick

7 July 2009

In a new series of free evening talks, leading writers are invited to the National Gallery to give their personal response to a painting of their choice in the Gallery collection. Talks take place during Friday Lates in front of the writer’s choice of painting. Speakers so far have included Arvon tutor Philip Hensher.

Dyer’s latest novel is Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi (2009), a beautifully told story of erotic love and spiritual yearning set partly in Venice where journalist Jeff Atman is covering the opening of the Biennale. The novel confirms Dyer as one of Britain’s most exciting and original writers.

On July 1oth at 6.30pm Geoff Dyer will  speak in front of Joseph Mallord William  Turner’s Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway, which depicts a steam engine as it advances across a bridge in the rain. In front of the train, a hare runs for cover. The scene has been identified as the railway bridge over the Thames at Maidenhead and the picture demonstrates Turner’s ability to capture atmospheric effects in paint.

Geoff Dyer was born in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, in 1958 and was educated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Dyer is the author of four novels, a critical study of John Berger, and six other nonfiction books, including But Beautiful, which was awarded the Somerset Maugham Prize, and Out of Sheer Rage, which was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. The winner of a Lannan Literary Award, the International Centre of Photography’s 2006 Infinity Award for writing on photography, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ E. M. Forster Award, Dyer is a regular contributor to publications including the Guardian and the New Statesman. He lives in London.

Engaging and funny… Dyer is a witty and concise observer of landscapes: social, geographical and emotional… [his] eccentric charm and barbed perceptiveness will hook you to the end.
The Times

Geoff Dyer will be a Guest Reader on Arvon’s Creative Non-Fiction course Shaping the Raw Material at Lumb Bank, September 28 – October 3 with tutors Miranda France and Hannah Pool.

For more information on the Writers in the Gallery series, please contact nicola.freeman@ng-london.org.uk or visit www.nationalgallery.co.uk