Tag: poetry

Writing Competition Time

Featured ~ JacciGoodingAuthor

Don’t you just love January? Oh c’mon, it’s a great month! So much to look forward to. Do you notice the days getting a teensy bit longer? So it may be cold/wet/snowy/bright/sunny/windy/all of the above but it means the earth is tilting toward the sun again, at least here in the northern hemisphere. Daylight will be returning and before you know it the crocus and daffs will be out, such horticultural joy sending us all a tiny bit doolallie for a while.

And what better news than knowing the South Warwickshire Lit Fest’s writing competition opens for submissions on January 15th.  That’s next week! The categories are the same as last year – Fiction, Creative Non-Fiction and Poetry and the entry fee is a paltry £3.80 (actually £3.50 but there is a 30p booking fee) with a £50 prize in each category. Closing date is March 29th so there is Per-Len-Tee of time to create your masterpiece whether some cracking poetry, stunning creative non-fiction or gasp-out-loud fiction. We’ll be shouting about it all over the socials, FB, X, I, BS – is that an anagram I wonder? – and we’re very much looking forward to your entries. All the details on how to enter are on our website – basically pay your entry fee then email us your work plus your Ticketsource reference number, here South Warwickshire Literary Festival.

When I created SWLF it was not in the mix to have writing competitions but since we introduced them they have been a marvellous insight in to what people are currently writing.  Supporting the Warwickshire Young Poet Laureate, who for 23/24 is May Vaughan, is always a delight, and interesting to see what younger people are writing about – so important that these voices get heard.

So here’s to your entries dear reader. I’m not a judge, just curator, so although I get to read all your lovely words my opinion counts for jack – we’re leaving the judging to the experts -all of whom will be revealed in the fullness of time..

So what are you waiting for ? Stop reading this and get writing!!

And if you know a young person in Warwickshire, aged 13-17 who could be the next YPL…

Entries for Warwickshire’s Young Poet Laureate 2024/25 will open in June 2024 at warwickshire.gov.uk/youngpoetlaureate. For more information about the Young Poet Laureate scheme please email libraryevents@warwickshire.gov.uk or your local library service if reading this in the UK.

Transformations by Beth Brooke

~ JacciGoodingAuthor

Taking inspiration from sculptor Elisabeth Frink’s work, which at the time of writing is on display at the Dorset Museum, Beth Brooke has crafted beautiful and in some cases brutal poetry. Thus this new collection of ekphrastic poetry entitled Transformations and published by Hedgehog Press overflows such vivid imagery that to the reader it really does feel the works of art that inspired her live and breathe. Her offering Gourmand (one who enjoys eating and often does it too much) is deliciously dark, after all, who could not feel a tremor pass through them when presented with lines like ‘maggoty, they melt upon the tongue’ referring to bits of decaying flesh. Don’t worry though, we’re not talking human. I don’t think..! It’s the last two lines however that will make your toes curl. Beth’s view of the natural world is spot-on especially her ornithological observations.
In the wonderful poem Internal Monologue of the Wild Boar, line structure and word spacing make us really feel we are there with the boar as he snuffles gently across the forest floor gathering all to him. Acorns and crab apples are gobbled up with a ‘garnish of beetle’ as we ponderously wander the woods, nose down as earthy scents fill our nostrils and it is delightful.
Changing the pace is the next poem simply entitled Dog. Nothing exemplifies the happiness in this short poem than the line ‘howls with joy’ and you can feel the excitement and energy rushing off the page. Wonderful to read.
This gorgeous collection of poetry creates searing imagery through the thoughtful choice of words and their placement on the page. Not familiar with Elisabeth Frink’s work I certainly get an idea of it via Beth’s poems. For example in Chinese Horse I (Rolling Horse) although I cannot see the bronze I can see the horse, feel it’s strength and hear it’s pounding hooves through lines such as ‘I am body machine heart engine blood’ as the magnificent beast bursts into life, charging across the page with such vitality it is impossible not to feel the wind as it races by.

If you like poetry inspired by art and nature I cannot recommend Transformations enough. The poems are short, touching, clear in their message and in all cases emotionally moving in some way. And the image on the front cover? A favourite of mythology and folklore, the Green Man. A really enjoyable read.

Want me to review your work? Just message me!

South Warwickshire Lit Fest 2023

~ JacciGoodingAuthor

Well what a giggle that was! Not that I was there in the end – face down on my pillow for 86 hours and a thick red ‘You’re Not Going Anywhere Sunshine’ line on my Covid test. Yep indeedy folks, a year of planning and writing stonkingly funny Tweets and I missed it! Thank the God of Writers (is there such a thing?) (I bet there is) friend and author Jenny Heap stepped in and did a marvellous job opening, compering and closing the day, whilst the other team members and friends Lynn Macwhinnie and Gwyneth Box held the rest of the day together, along with a lovely gathering of volunteers. But there’s a lesson in there chums – always have a plan B and C!

Great big thanks must absolutely go to all our authors, poets, and workshop leaders: Dr Claire Millington, Emily Hunt, Gabrielle Mullarkey, Celia Rees, Erin Green, Louise Boland (Fairlight Books), Fran Hill, Gwyneth Box, Melissa Addey, Creative Writing Events.

Here’s a quick snippet from our feedback forms and I have to say dear reader, all the feedback we were given was stupendous. Thank you everyone who came – we couldn’t do it without you.

I know; if I had one, I’d blow it.

So next year I hear you saying? Well, another writing competition is on the horizon for January, so keep tuned!

The Old Allotments – a poem

~ JacciGoodingAuthor ~ 2 Comments

Following on from Sue Cook’s @popsytops blog about landscape which I reblogged last week, I too have been on a walk, recently passing the 120 year old St Mary’s Allotments in Leamington Spa. It’s hard to convey the gentle energy in spaces like this, but here goes..

Nourishment, earth fed, where

robins, blackbirds, crows reside,

grows plentiful and rich

beside the banks and riverside

Where working man has striven

long, his brow a sweat of toil

as hands, like spades with aching back

worked hard the heavy soil

To feed, to grow his many

crops, returning home triumphant

as empty mouths and stomachs waited

for succour and for comfort.

Grass, long and green and succulent,

home too for mouse and insect

caresses now the empty pots

as blackbirds, thrush, with perfect

eye, lunge quick and sharp and

faultlessly, each jab around the hedging

another search for sustenance

to feed the growing fledgling.

Autumn apples drop to feed the

dormant springtime flowers,

the earth and all its worms and creatures,

made damp with summer showers.

Make way for compost, de-generation

as winter rests the ground

and sure as night will follow day

the earth will echo with the sound

of working men – and women now

who find a moment’s peace

within the lanes and grassy tracks

where troubles fail,

then

            cease.

A Landscape with Birds by Beth Brooke

~ JacciGoodingAuthor

This wonderful collection of short verse from author Beth Brooke is poignant, clever, and expressive. Beth brings the landscape to us, presses us to acknowledge we are linked to it, part of it, draws out of us our unacknowledged place in the world today. Simple lines can hit the mark and make us think of places we would rather be. In Ploughing, April 2020, we are on the sidelines watching a farmer plough a field, seagulls diving toward the turned earth. Yet in an instant we leave the rich winter field, those seagulls transporting us from the bucolic to the ocean in six simple words. We are there, we can feel the salt on our skin and the tang in the air because we know what it’s like to miss the sea, somehow we understand that intangible desire the sea arouses in us to be near it. And it is the much maligned seagull that takes us there.

Beautiful imagery, like a classic film or an assortment of incredible art, plays throughout this collection, pushing to the forefront birds and their landscape, from the opening poem Jackdaws (and you know it’s true!) to the feathery, flitting, daring nonchalance of sparrows and the oh so sad kauai o’o bird. Every poem demands a second read – sometimes a third – and returning to the book a month or so later, you’ll find yourself wanting to read them all again at once.

We Take Our Son to University is a lovely lovely poem, so neat, so gentle, touching. And you can see that red kite, skimming across the page as you read the words. In Betrayal, the flight of ravens articulates the words that cannot be said; they speak for anyone wounded by duplicity.

            If you like birds, nature, the landscape all tied together in beautiful poetry, then I would recommend a read of this book. It’s not a big book, coming in at only 31 pages, but each poem is patiently observed and crafted. An absolute gem.

A Landscape with Birds is published by Hedgehog Poetry Press, Bristol.

http://www.hedgehogpress.co.uk

Poetry Prose and Other Things

~ JacciGoodingAuthor

As part of the on-going preparations for next year’s South Warwickshire Literary Festival, this Saturday I’m very much looking forward to hopping over to Rugby library to see and hear the contestants for next year’s Warwickshire Young Poet Laureate. It’s been a while since I attended the event due to you-know-what, so it’ll be good to get back in the audience and hear these excellent poets read their work. The event is being hosted by poet Steve Pottinger and it’ll be good to hear his work too.

On the subject of words, poets and writery things, in an email I received from from the Evesham Festival of Words Director Sue Abblet today, she shared this about the festival and how such events can be an inspiration:

“When the Festival first started we used to run a Junior Short Story Competition.  A regular winner was Iona Mandal who said that our Festival was a huge source of inspiration.  Huge congratulations to Iona who was recently selected as Birmingham Young Poet Laureate (2022 – 2024).” Isn’t that just fantastic? So keep those short story and poetry competitions going – they’re so important.

And not only but also, the Young Poets Network is an online platform for poets under the age of 25 and is packed full of contacts and ideas, and is a great confidence builder for those young poets just starting out. Does the world need more poets I hear you rhyme? Yeah, all the time. Hey – I’m not 24 any more, ok?! 

Going back to short story comps, the marvellous Banbury Writers’ Cafe are hosting a free to enter picture prompt comp which closes at the end of this month. If you zip over to their website you’ll find the four photos to stir your inspiration and all you have to do is tiptappitytip away on your keyboard and get an entry in. Poetry is also accepted. Yeah! I know! 1500 words or less. Guidelines are all on the website. Apparently they’re happy to chuck fifty quid at the winner, thirty at second place and a flat unbendy twenty for third place.  They’re a generous bunch.