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lowdown events lowdown events
REMEMBERING CHRISSIE
VANE WOMEN would like to pay tribute to Chrissie Glazebrook, the novelist, who has died from cancer. Chrissie could have stepped straight out of one of those feisty American movies about dynamic secretaries who make the big time. As writers we knew that Chrissie was one of the chief assets of Northern Arts Literature Department when she was secretary there. She's so good, we used to say to ourselves, she should be an Officer. And that is exactly what she became. But her career was just starting. She also did a Creative Writing MA at the University of Northumbria and then hit the jackpot straight away with her black comedy novel The Madolescents. This was followed by her second excellent novel Blue Spark Sisters. She seemed destined for a long successful writing career.
While she was at Northern Arts she was the ideal Literature officer, able to apply the rules with imagination and verve, so essential in any bureaucratic system. Chrissie was an exceptional woman and how needed she is today.
To say she was like a sister to writing women was not to exaggerate her skills, sympathy and general zest for life. She particularly intervened at one stage to support Vane Women Press at a crucial stage of our development. Such things aren't forgotten and our later successes have been built on that. Certainly the many women writers we have published have reason to be grateful to Chrissie's sharp assessment of support at the right time. She was a lovely bubbly woman and another great loss to the North East literary scene.
CHEERS
We have been invited to take this show to St. John's Chapel, Weardale, on December 15 so if you are nearby you are invited to join us. There will be an open mic. Wassail is an ancient Toast. The answer is Drinkhail. So when you lift your glasses you know what to say. Probably the most popular Wassail drink to go A-Wassailing is mulled cider. But if you can't pop down to the West Country we're sure mulled wine will do or a poker in the beer. The poker is supposed to be red hot by the way, so take care. Not sure why this is a custom but it is supposed to have an effect on the ale.
Last time we went a-wassailing Vane Women were dressed in red and green with a few sparkley bits added to get into the right Wassail spirit. There was a good crowd in and five who braved the open mic session. Lots of really good poems, short stories and, wait for it, songs. The evening ended with handshakes all round, mulled wine and mincepies. Bring back more of these ancient customs say I. And St. John's Chapel seems to agree with me.
MISCHIEF NIGHT AT DARLO
Vane Women turned into Women Behaving Badly on Mischief Night (is this unusual? - Ed) at Darlington Arts Centre on November 7. Donning long dresses, long sleeved gloves, hats, feather boas and other adornments, we felt ready to be naughty. In the North apparently Mischief Night is celebrated more or less in the first week of November. Time to throw eggs at doors, tie door handles together, ring bells and run away. Puckish tricks handed down the ages.Hit of the evening was a bit of cursing and swearing. First of all the curse from Annie Wright about an unmentionable subject. Well not to be revealed on this page at least but it has something to do with gentlemen and raised toilet seats. It was a long and blood curdling curse which should have the men worried.
The swearing came from duo Pru Kitching and Anne Hine and concerned the word bugger being repeated rather a lot, meaning damn it, with a bit more force. The poem was written following a reading in Carlisle to which no-one came, so fair enough to say bugger it all the way home. It was performed with aplomb and received a terrific round of applause from the audience which is a good example of adversity being a great muse.
Mischief Night was another of Vane Women's themed evenings that was a success with the patrons. It had the air of an Edwardian music hall without the dancing and singing, but you know what I mean. It ended with the Devil having the last word, translated by his familiar Lindsay Balderson. The devil in snorting devilish gargles told the audience to buy books. And they did.
VANE WOMAN ON FORWARD PRIZE SHORTLIST
We are very proud to announce that Vane Women's Joanna Boulter has been shortlisted for the Forward / Felix Dennis First Collection Prize with her first full poetry collection Twenty Four Preludes and Fugues on Dmitri Shostakovich, published by Arc Publications in October 2006. Joanna is a founder member of Vane Women, and also Poetry Editor of Darlington's Arrowhead Press.
Joanna's collection, a book-length sequence of poems about the composer and his music, set against the background of life in Stalinist Russia, was a labour of love which was eleven years in the writing. There were times when it seemed such a huge undertaking that she was close to giving up. But she says her friends in Vane Women were endlessly supportive. (And so we were! - Ed!) Other members of the Newcastle MA in Writing Poetry (2000 - 2002) helped too, and a Northern Promise Award from New Writing North in 2002 was a great boost. This paid for mentoring support from David Morley, leading directly to a Hawthornden Fellowship in 2004, when she put the finishing touches to the manuscript.
The atmospheric cover photo, of the Mihailovsky Gardens, St Petersburg, is by Alan Turnbull, a painter, printmaker and photographer based at Newcastle University.
COMMENDATION FOR CHRIS
Chris Powell's short story THE RUSSIANS ARE DROWNING was one of only four commended entries in the recent BLINKING EYE short story competition, and the only one from the North East! The competition was judged by acclaimed novelist and short story writer Hilary Mantel who said of Chris's story: 'I would have liked to stay longer with the characters ... perhaps meet them in a novel; I was intrigued by their situation and drawn by the author's lurking, dark, comic sense.'In 2005 Vane Women Press published Chris's much admired first collection of short stories, Burning the Blue Winged Boys and she joined the Vane Women collective last year.
FULL HOUSE IN HEXHAM
Judy Walker, another new Vane Women, recently had her short play Bottling It staged at Hexham. Here is her report:
In January I was lucky enough, along with one other local writer, to be invited by the Queen's Hall in Hexham to submit a 30 minute theatre script, as part of their new writing development programme.
Bottling It, a comedy about a married couple escaping London's rat race to set up a business in rural Northumberland selling bottled air, was performed in May and both performances were sell-outs. Shelley O'Brien and Peter Peverley played Roger and Gill Fresh and the play was directed by Geof Keys, artistic director of the Queen's Hall. I also received fantastic mentoring during the writing period from playwright Carina Rodney.
I learned a huge amount during the writing and rehearsal process and was tremendously grateful to the Queen's Hall for supporting me throughout the project. It's given me so much confidence to continue down the scriptwriting route, which, because I love writing dialogue, is where I feel I want to go in the future.
I am one of four writers taking part in the Emerge programme this year, a scriptwriting development course run by New Writing North. Again, this involves writing a 30 minute theatre play, with mentoring support from Steve Chambers. I'm really enjoying the programme, which - so far - has included a residential weekend in the wilds of Northumberland, participating in the Northern Screenwriters conference, the Making Theatre conference and the Writing for Television conference, seeing lots of plays at Northern Stage and attending a workshop at the Soho Theatre in London.
OUTREACH WORK IN EGGLESTON
Vane Women run workshops in rural areas. The latest was in Eggleston run by Margaret Rule and Dorothy Long on a glorious misty warm afternoon, sheep grazing out of the window. Five women attended, ranging in age from 24 to 84. Two hours, over coffee and cake, of careful thought about personal memories of significant images and also looking at the Northern Grit exhibition, ably mounted by Pat Maycroft.
Eggleston is a picturesque village nestling in the Northern Pennines designated as a Conservation Area. Lead mining was the major industry in the dales in the 18th century, the Eggleston mine was called Sharnberry. The village hall was built by the London Lead Company as a reading and lecture room. It is part of the Village Halls Consortium and used for many different activities.
NEW BOOKS LAUNCHES
Once again Durham Literature Festival staged the launch of our latest pamphlet collections. The launch pad was the stunning Studio at the Gala Theatre which has floor to ceiling windows looking out over the River Wear and beyond to the lights of the night trains zipping between Scotland and London. Inside it was just as stunning with fantastic displays for each book: larger than life replicas plus fairy lights for The Spar Box and the table of artifacts recreated by Pat Maycroft and Diane Cockburn from the cover of The Laden Table.
Celia McCulloch and Pippa Little at the Festival launch
Photos by Pat Maycroft As Kevin Cadwallender writes on his Lit Fest Blog Vane Women have a unique way of doing things. Tonight was no exception.
We are very proud of these two collections, beautifully written and well-produced.The MC for the evening was Marilyn Longstaff. "As one of the emergent Editors," she said, " I now know how much time and meticulous effort goes into the production, not least in the design of the wonderful covers (original photographs and design by Pat Maycroft). A poet's first collection is so precious and the editorial team (with other Eds. Jackie Litherland and Dot Long) does everything in its power to ensure that this book will be everything the writer wants (and more)."
The poets did real justice to their work, reading with confidence and passion. A good audience shared our appreciation in their generous applause and, of course, in buying the books.
PAMPHLET CHOICE HONOURS FOR PIPPA
Vane Women Press are delighted to announce that The Spar Box by Pippa Little has won the Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice beating off nation-wide competition.
We're proud for Pippa and proud for the Press. It means that PBS members will be informed about the pamphlet and there will be a page of commentary about the Choice in the forthcoming PBS Bulletin. Small presses dream of such things. So congratulations all round! Naturally we are proud of ALL our authors. However nice to get recognition for our hard work and that's always welcome.
Celia McCulloch and Pippa Little tell us they owe their success to an apprenticeship served in the class Writing from the Inside Out.
This class was tutored for many years by Northern Rock Foundation Award winning poet Gillian Allnutt. Other tutors were novelist and playwright Margaret Wilkinson and, currently, poet Anna Woodford.
The Laden Table
Celia McCulloch was born in Michigan and came to England in 1959. She has six children, seven grandchildren and a great-granddaughter. She taught English and Women's Studies for 25 years and made things: quilts, gardens, long walks and poems. She completed the MA in Creative Writing at Newcastle University in 2005. This is her first collection and is a harvest of her amazing full life and acquired wisdom. Just the book for 'green' living.
The Spar Box
Pippa Little was born in Tanzania, raised in St Andrews, Scotland, and now lives in Northumberland. She has been a teacher, editor, and a writer of children's annuals, and has a doctorate in 20th century women's poetry from London University. An Eric Gregory Award allowed her to travel to Hungary which has since become a second home. She was a poetry co-editor of Writing Women and its two anthologies published by Virago. The Spar Box is a fascinating collection of things lost and found. This is a haunting book, the sort that exiles might pick up and feel at home.
You can order both books from Press for the Press.
NEW BOOKS FROM VANE WOMEN
IRON PRESS had a fab launch of The Homage by S. J. Litherland on October 17 at Durham Literature Festival in the same venue.This is Jackie's fifth collection of poetry which continues her interest in the theme of survival - this time in the form of the last season of cricketing legend Nasser Hussain who was fighting for his place in the England team during 2003-4. Jackie is a cricket fan (Wouldn't have guessed! - Ed). She's also an ex-journalist and dislikes the way the modern media bully sporting personalities. Inspired by sagas of old, the sequence follows Nasser's last stand from England, to Bangladesh, to the West Indies and back to England again. The book concludes with his retirement and valedictory Test at Lords, now one of the most famous of all time - when the derided Nasser reaches a 100 as he plays the winning strokes of the game. Tumult at Lords!!
Kevin Cadwallender adds his thoughts on his Lit Fest Blog. Cricket is not his bag but he found the collection fascinating.
The Homage was NOMINATED for Cricket Book of the Year and Iron Press Ed. Peter Mortimer received the intelligence that it aroused fierce discussion and only failed by a whisker to reach the short-list. Given the old-fogey conservative cricket Establishment filled with characters called Athers and Aggers this was a rare moment for a book of poetry by a women author to be considered. Heavens! The walls of the Long Room will come tumbling down. First they admit women members to the MCC and what next?
You can order Jackie's book from Press for the Press or from Iron Press at Inpress Books
Jackie had an earlier major collection out in 2006 (does this remind us of the problem of long awaited buses arriving ...? - Ed) published by Flambard Press in July, a four-part book The Work of the Wind, which accounts for the years she spent with fellow poet Barry MacSweeney. It draws on experiences from 1993 - when she met Barry again - until 2001, a year after his death. This is also a book of survival. She and Barry were partners during the time he was fighting his alcoholism. The book's four parallel parts mirror the sense of polarisation and dialectic involved in their lives as they struggle with the contrast between normality and crisis.
You can see the critical acclaim of Jackie's book on the Flambard website.
Vane Women and the Sea
What a breeze it was! Annie Wright was our Pirate-in-Chief (move over Johnny Depp, specially after your latest effort in Dead Man's Chest) and Vane Women proved they were no land-lubbers with a miscellany of sea poems and stories and lots of swash-buckling aboard the good ship S.S. Darlington Arts Centre on a balmy night last July. Our open mic-ers sprang to the main-brace and earned themselves applause from the goodly crew of an audience.
A great night. There ought to be a special mention of the stage setting conjured up by Diane Cockburn from her treasure chest.
DISCOVERED!
Diane Cockburn has also been attracting attention recently for her short stories as well as her quirky poetry. Here's a recent review by Victoria Briggs in MsLexia:"Discoverers, short stories from the Tees Valley, is an eclectic mix of stories by experienced writers and new voices from the North East.
"'Listen with mother,' by Diane Cockburn, tells of a middle-aged couple busily preparing for the funeral of the wife's mother, who has not yet entirely departed this earth. Cockburn's use of description is exquisite, like when she describes the wife who resembles, after too much crying, 'a piece of self-pummelled plasticine.' Or, 'the pungent smell of lilies [that] lay on everything like a cat.'"
This is a spot to remember poets and writers we have lost in recent years: Jon Silkin, Gordon Brown, Barry MacSweeney, Andrew Waterhouse, Ric Caddel, Andrea Badenoch, Michael Donaghy, Julia Darling, Bill Griffiths and Chrissie Glazebrook.
Any news? Gossip? Let us know. Email in confidence and we'll tell the world (Please NOTE: When emailing replace <at> with @ to fool the spammers).
lowdown epostbag lowdown epostbag
Hello!
Would you have time to look at my website:HappenStance Press?
And decide whether you'd like a link. If you publish pamphlets, which I think you do, I ought to have you on my list. Also, you should know about Sphinx, a magazine about to be Born, very very imminently, which will be wholly dedicated to chapbook poetry and review only poetry in that form.
Let me know what you think.
Best wishes
Helena<HE11@beatonh.freeserve.co.ukThanks Helen
I've looked up your website. And I've put the site into the links below. It's good to be in touch. I very much like the idea of promoting pamphlets/chapbooks. Obviously that fits into the work that Vane Women Press has been doing in the not-so-far North (as you in Scotland) down here. I can recommend that all writers interested in similar ventures contact your site.
Ed.
Hi All
Just dropping you a quick line to ask if you want to exchange website links.
As you are probably aware, I've published the entire contents of The AA Independent Press Guide online. It can now be accessed totally free. I want to let as many people as possible know about this development; and one of the ways of doing this is to set up website link exchanges.
If you have a website, or are involved in a group or magazine that has a website, please post a link to The AA Independent Press Guide.
Dee Rimbaud<thunderburst@ntlworld.com>
See Links Below and impressive logo (Ed.).
Dear Vane Women
I thought your readers might be interested in our humor poetry contest, now in its fourth year. Taking a page from Dave Barry, this contest invites people to make up absurd poems and send them to 'vanity contests' as a joke. Prizes are awarded to the best bad poems. There is no entry fee. Please let me know if you have any questions.
ANNOUNCING THE FOURTH ANNUAL WERGLE FLOMP POETRY CONTEST
Prizes of $1,190, $169, $60 and 5 honorable mentions of $38 each. No fee to enter. A humor contest with a special twist. Judge: Jendi Reiter. Deadline: April 1. Submit one poem online at: Winning Writers Comp
Regards
Adam Cohen<adam@winningwriters.com>
866-WINWRIT
Dear Vane Women
I'm writing to let you know about a new print-based poetry magazine called Anon that employs anonymous submission and assessment procedures. For full details (our agenda, how to submit poems, how to subscribe), please visit our website:
www.blanko.org.uk/anon Anon
Anon seeks to provide a level playing field for poets, known and unknown, and is generating considerable interest. With Issue 1 we intend to establish a significant presence in the world of poetry magazines.
We feel that this project will be of interest to all Vane Women who are committed to poetry. We would be very grateful if you could forward this e-mail to them, or print it out and take it to one of your sessions. And if you approve of what Anon stands for, you might even consider linking to us?
Mike Stocks
Editor<mike@volta1.fsworld.co.uk>Dear Mike -I've passed your news to other Vane Women and now anyone reading this site. I've also put a Link below to anyone going straight there. Good Luck with your 'hush hush' submissions.
Hi,
I've just put Julia Darling's new web site online at www.juliadarling.co.uk and I thought you might like to give it a boost in the Lowdown section of the Vane Women website. An innovation, at least for us, is that Julia is running an online diary at www.juliadarling.co.uk/weblog/ and says she'll try to update it every day. Enjoy! Roger.<roger@cornwell.nu>Dear Roger, See Links below! (next to Diamond Twig).
lowdown links lowdown links
Here are a few nifty links for writers. We'll add to the list as we grow. Any sites out there who want a link from us, let us know at low.down<at>vanewomen.co.uk (Please NOTE: When emailing replace <at> with @ to fool the spammers).See you surfing!
Selkirk Lapwing Press
HappenStance Press
The AA Independent Press Guide. A free online writers resource, listing over 2000 magazines and publishers and 700 internet magazines
Independent Northern Publishers
Sand magazine
Anon magazine
Pat Maycroft
Shore Women
Flambard Press
Diamond Twig
LOLLIPOP List of Little Press Publications
Fire
Durham City Arts
New Writing North
Durham Writers
Northern Arts
Rain Dog
Jack Drum Arts
Visit Poetry.net
Arrowhead Press
Web site design by Roger Cornwell.
Last updated on December 7 2007.
